


If We Lived and Were Good

by samalander



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, F/M, M/M, Multi, Space Pirates, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-12
Updated: 2011-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-22 06:21:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 39,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a Universe where Starfleet is at war with the Independent Trader's Guild, a pirate named George Lowther has found a very specific replacement, and planned an elaborate going away "party." What he hasn't planned are the consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_**FIC: If We Lived And Were Good Masterpost**_  
 **Title:** If We Lived and Were Good  
 **Author:** [](http://users.livejournal.com/_samalander/profile)[**_samalander**](http://users.livejournal.com/_samalander/)  
 **Fandom:** ST:AOS  
 **Rating:** R  
 **Wordcount:** 40,229  
 **Warnings:** In order; mentions of substance abuse, fighting, starvation and slavery; non-explicit sex; torture (physical, mental and chemical); minor character death; abuse of minors; killing parents faster than a Disney movie.  
 **Characters/Pairings:** Kirk/McCoy/Chapel, Pike/One, (spoilers ahead, highlight to read)

Archer/Komack, Sam/Aurelan.

Also background Spock/Uhura, Chekov/Sulu, Scotty, McKenna, Pike!Spawn, Winona, George Kirk, Boyce, Giotto, M'Benga, Barnett and Mitchell.  
 **Summary:** In a Universe where Starfleet is at war with the Independent Trader's Guild, a pirate named George Lowther has found a very specific replacement, and planned an elaborate going away "party." What he hasn't planned are the consequences.  
 **Disclaimer:** Star Trek is property of people who are not me. For a full list of acknowledgements, please see the Author's Note. The title is from a Mark Twain quote: "Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates."

  
[Part 1](http://community.livejournal.com/velocicopter/2847.html)  
[Part 2](http://community.livejournal.com/velocicopter/2638.html)  
[Part 3](http://community.livejournal.com/velocicopter/2529.html)  
[Part 4](http://community.livejournal.com/velocicopter/2236.html)

[Author's Note/Acknowledgements](http://community.livejournal.com/velocicopter/1861.html) (Contains Spoilers)

  
THIS JUST IN!  
[](http://emmypenny.livejournal.com/profile)[ **emmypenny**](http://emmypenny.livejournal.com/) made a KICK ASS mix that you can check out [here](http://emmypenny.livejournal.com/313365.html) and you should tell her that she is awesome and pretty.

Also please see the Pike/One-themed companion piece [Maps of a Compass Rose](http://theoreticalfic.livejournal.com/18446.html) by [](http://theoreticalpixy.livejournal.com/profile)[**theoreticalpixy**](http://theoreticalpixy.livejournal.com/). You don't need to read it to understand this, but I would if I were you.


	2. FIC: If We Lived And Were Good (Part 1/4)

_**FIC: If We Lived And Were Good (Part 1/4)**_  
Chris had never stopped looking.

It'd been twenty-four years since George died, a blaze of light in the sky, and Chris had never forgotten Jim and Sam.

Jim wasn't easy to find. Chris had tracked the boy across the quadrants, stopping at dive bars and holes in the walls, looking. It was a stroke of luck that they'd both ended up at the _Red Shirt_ that night, but it wasn't entirely unexpected. Chris had watched as the kid started the fight, watched as he started to lose, and fought off the guys who had Jim pinned. Then he calmly lifted the punch-drunk kid from the floor, tossed him over his shoulder and left. No one stopped him. They were mostly slavers themselves, Chris knew their types. They assumed he'd beaten them to some merchandise.

They couldn't have been more wrong.

Jim had spent the next week in the med bay of _Enterprise_ , slowly detoxing under Boyce's watchful eye.

On the seventh day, Jim had looked Chris in the face and seemed lucid for the first time.

"I'm not gonna be your whore," the kid had growled, looking exhausted and angry.

"I don't want a whore," Chris replied, biting back a smile. "I want James T. Kirk."

"Winona doesn't pay ransoms."

"I don't want a ransom."

Jim had looked at him then, really looked at him. The silence had stretched out to where a normal person might have been uncomfortable. And then kept it going.

Finally, the kid spoke again. "So, who the fuck are you?"

Chris smiled, wide and easy. "They call me George Lowther."

"Bullshit. George Lowther isn't a graying old man, I've seen pictures."

"Of course you have," Chris said. "You've seen pictures of the man who they think is George Lowther. But here's a secret, and I'm going to trust you because by the time we're done you won't want to tell; there have been, to date, four George Lowthers. And if you let me, I'm going to make you number five."

Jim snorted. "Me? Who the fuck do you think I am?"

"Your father's son."

"My father was an idiot who transported himself and a load of hydrogen explosives onto a ship, and the Trader's Guild thinks he's a hero for it."

"Your father was the best captain I ever had."

"Who are you?" Jim's eyes were narrowed to slits. "When you're not Lowther."

"That," Chris said, rising from Jim's side, "is the big question." Chris started to leave, the non-answer lying heavy in the air. He hesitated at the door, expecting Jim to call him back. To the kid's credit, he was staring at the ceiling, not watching Chris leave.

"You can look through the rosters of _Kelvin_ , if you want, but that's a loser's game. You should prove you're a worthy replacement, and earn the answer."

He turned again, actually intending to leave this time, when the kid's voice called him back.

"I remember you. You're Pike. George's old pilot. Helped him kill himself. You used to sniff around my m- around Winona, when I was a kid. You left before she left us with the Asshole."

Chris nodded. "Good memory."

"I haven't seen you since I was six."

"Time to fix that, kid." Chris said, grinning. This was actually going better than he had planned. "We're gonna spend a lot of time together."

\---

Jim was a hard worker, once he accepted the idea that someday this would all be his. The name Lowther had been active for more than 30 years, and people tended to quake when _Enterprise_ entered their orbit. Jim liked the attention, he liked the power. He didn't like the idea of being called George on a daily basis, but he could live with it for the time it would take to build his fortune. Chris had been looking for his replacement for a long time, and Jim was definitely the right man for the job.

Chris had built a name in his time, partially by running a fair crew, partially by staging assaults on Fleet headquarters. They knew he was Lowther and they couldn't prove it, so every year or so, he'd let them catch him, let his favorite Admiral, Number One, interview him for a few hours, and then stage a daring escape. Jim was pretty sure Pike was suicidal for it, but they planned one of these runs out for the two of them, planned it to officially end Chris's career.

After 18 months of working together, they discharged the crew and hired on a new one. Chris still hadn't told Jim where he'd be retiring to, or the exact nature of their frontal assault on Starfleet, but he would. There was time. There should have been time.

They'd needed to shanghai the doctor, which is always a negative, but the man quickly realized that he was on a good ship, with a good crew and a captain who had the potential to be great.

Jim also started sleeping with him, and the head nurse, which Chris thought was a little stupid.

"Troikas are more stable, Dad," Jim huffed when Chris explained his feelings. Jim had started calling Chris "dad" when he was angry, or hurt, or just really happy. So, most of the time. "And as a couple, no combination of us would work. Christine and I need Bones to keep us grounded. Bones and I need Christine to mediate us. And they need me to be the pretty one."

Chris rolled his eyes. "I'm just saying, it's a bad-"

"What do you know?" Jim snapped, tired of the calm judgment. "When's the last time you had a relationship?"

To his credit, Chris didn't backhand the little shit. "I'm having a baby," he shot back. "So I think I know a fair bit about-" Chris lost the steam of his anger when Jim's face crumpled.

"A baby? But- why do you—"

Chris pulled Jim into a tight hug. "It wasn't planned. But she's pregnant and in about seven months, I'm going to have a baby."

Jim nodded dumbly. "And who is she?"

The Big Reveal. Chris had been dreading this. In truth, he almost didn't know how it had happened, how he and Number One had ended up as expectant parents. Logic dictated that the quadrant's most wanted pirate shouldn't fall for the woman running the hunt for him. But she was fierce and beautiful and she broke his nose the first time he stole a kiss in one of his snatch-and-grab runs to headquarters. He didn't see how he could not love her.

It was complicated. It was so, so complicated. One wasn't just the woman who was hunting Chris, she was the woman who hunted Winona, and by extension Jim and Sam, through the first 16 years of Jim's life. Jim hated her more than his former step father, the man Chris left with a hole in his head, dying in a ditch on Rukbat III after Jim told him what the bottom-dweller had done to him.

But Jim asked, and Chris had never not answered one of Jim's questions. "It's- Jim, it's Number One."

Jim got up and left the room, back straight and fist balled at his sides. It wasn't theatrical, it was quiet and painful and all Chris could do was watch him leave. They'd had this crew for two months and Chris might have just ruined everything he had built with Jim.

\---

 _Chris lay on the bed in an out of the way hotel on an out of the way planet, trying to figure out exactly what the fuck he was doing._

 _Number One was stretched next to him, close but not touching. She wasn't a snuggler - neither of them was. After sex, she said, her body felt raw and overworked, and she needed a moment, an hour, a lifetime, to come back to herself, some time to not be about him._

 _He respected that._

 _But it was morning, and she was leaving._

 _This had been going on for a long time, now. Nearly fifteen years since he met her, ten since they started - whatever this was._

 _It wasn't easy. It had never been easy, and it wasn't going to get easy, so Chris told himself to fucking deal._

 _But the fact remained that he was George Lowther, and she was the agent in charge of catching him and they were sleeping together and he loved her and she loved him. And it was easy to forget it all, in the throes of sweat and skin and passion, but it was there, the complexities burning just under the love, love like a plasma fire. It ate the air from the room, leaving noting for him to breathe but her._

 _He kinda loved it. Complications and all._

 _She stirred and turned over to look at him, sleep clouding her eyes. He reached a hand out to caress her cheek, still trying to get a handle on the idea that this was real, this was happening, this was his. She laid a kiss on the heel of his hand, and slowly stretched, stood and walked to the bathroom. They weren't going to be able to meet again until the capture, and Chris hated himself a little, for leaving the Fleet, for living in this universe, for loving someone when it was so hard to be together._

 _And then there was Jim._

 _They had been planning a long time, Chris and One, that she would come and take him away from his life of crime, that they'd go live somewhere with a sky and stars and raise horses. He'd had her pick the place last night, going through pictures and files until he had five candidates, and asking her to choose the winner. She'd picked a ranch called_ Yorktown _and secretly, he had rejoiced. It was his favorite, too, and now it could be theirs. He was wealthy enough for retirement, and she was tired of the cruelty and hypocrisy that ran rampant through the Fleet._

 _When Chris had found Jim, when he named him as heir, the pieces seemed to be coming together. One was laying the framework for their capture, getting closer each time, and Chris was getting just that much sloppier. They'd talked "Giant Slayer" Giotto into playing along, taking the reward and fucking off when he was done._

 _But Jim._

 _Jim trusted Chris, the way babies and puppies trust. The way Chris remembered trusting his mother, with warmth and sweetness. And Chris was lying about where he was, what he was doing, all of it. He hated lying to Jim._

 _They'd be setting out in a few days, his triumphant return to the name he'd abandoned 13 years ago, becoming Chris Pike, first officer to a young hotshot called George Lowther. This was the last time Lowther would ship out, though Jim didn't know that yet._

 _He would, he would know all of it, and soon._

 _But for now, Chris eased his aching body off the bed and padded silently over to the bathroom, over to One, and wrapped his arms around her as she brushed her teeth._

 _"I love you," he whispered, still shocked that she managed to make the very mundane acts of everyday life stunning and vivid just by living them. He laid a kiss on her neck, and she leaned forward to spit, purposefully rolling her hips against him._

 _This was so hard._

 _And it was so worth it._

\---

The baby was a girl. Jim hated that it was a girl but he thought he would hate it more if the baby was a boy.

A girl he could live with. If he had to.

\---

Two months before the scheduled attack on Fleet headquarters, three months after Jim found out about Number One, he and Chris had a meeting to discuss the details. There weren't many; they'd rendezvous with "Giant Slayer" Giotto, be ferried to Earth where Giotto would collect the reward, they would hang out with some Admirals and be tortured for a few days, and then Giant Slayer would pick them up and take them back to _Enterprise_ with Number One in tow and dead admirals in their wake.

They'd also be retiring the Lowther name.

Jim agreed that if you're going to go out, you have to go out big. But parts of this, big parts, were scary and bad, and he couldn't control them.

"My allergies," he asked Pike. "They dose me with the wrong thing, feed me something bad, and it's not even worth it."

Chris smiled. "It won't happen. One has the list, and they'll do a full workup once they know who you are. Have to be in top shape if you're going to give them the information they want before they kill you."

"This is a terrible idea," Jim sighed, not for the first time.

"We're prepared, son. We're prepared and we've got multiple ways out. We kill Barnett, Komack, and Archer and no one will ever confuse you with George Kirk ever again. Or George Lowther. People will know you for who you are."

Jim nodded and fiddled with the PADD in his lap. "I wish Sam were here."

"Me too."

"You know where he is?"

Pike shook his head sadly. Finding Jim had been hard, but not impossible. Finding Sam- well, Sam had run away when he was 14, and disappeared somewhere around Vulcan, working on a freighter. The trail just went cold, and Chris had never been able to find him. But he had Jim, and most days, that was more than enough.

\---

The plan was simple, Jim knew it and Chris knew it. The problem was mostly that they were supposed to rendezvous with the Giant Slayer the next day and Jim couldn't sleep.

He was tucked securely between Christine and Bones, one of her small hands twined in his, and one of Bones' arms thrown protectively across his torso.

In retrospect, he should have told them sooner.

Jim couldn't help but feel this was all Pike's fault; the plan had been for Jim to be captain for a year or two before they pulled this, but then Pike got that woman pregnant, and it was all downhill.

 _You know she has a brand, Jimmy? It's the shape of a number one. If she ever catches us, she'll brand us, and make us her slaves._

Jim knew, in his grown-up mind, Sam had just been making noise, that One was harmless to him. But a small part of him, the part that would always be a scared 11-year-old hiding from his stepfather, still thought she might be lurking under the bed with various implements of torture.

He'd spoken with her twice over secure channels, talked about the plan and Pike and the kid. What he hadn't done was ask the questions he wanted to, like "Why did you stop chasing us?" That was the big one. He remembered hearing on the feeds that the Fleet was calling off the manhunt for Winona, remembered being swept into a tearful hug. But he didn't know why and he still didn't trust it.

The other big question, the one Jim thought One knew the answer to, was "Where is Sam?" But he knew that Pike must have asked, knew that Pike still scanned every feed and monitored most of the comm channels for mention of George Samuel Kirk, Jr. But there was nothing, and the silence hurt more than any bar fight ever did.

The One that Jim remembered, the nightmare of his childhood, was a harpy and a harridan who burned numbers into her victim's front doors when she took them, and their flesh once she had them. He spent years coming home from school, terrified that he'd find his family gone, the only calling card a telltale numeral.

And if it never happened, well, that didn't make it any easier to deliver himself to her.

Christine had cried, when he told her what he was doing. Bones had looked furious and terrified and annoyed, which is something Jim would never entirely understand, the way Bones could feel all those things at the same time. But he did, and he wore it all over his face.

"No, Jim," Bones had said, shaking his head. Jim had told them who he really was early in their relationship, when he realized exactly how weird it was going to be to have them call him George in bed. "No."

But Christine, eyes watering, had taken Bones' hands. "He has to. Look at him. He has to."

Jim just sat, palms sweaty on his knees, waiting for them to decide they didn't want to put up with this. Bones snorted, but then turned and leaned into Jim, pressing their mouths together in a kiss that could only be called possessive.

"You come back to us, you hear?" Christine said, as Bones pulled back. "If you don't we will break into headquarters and _drag_ you back. And you won't like it." She smiled, though the tears were still running down her cheeks, and leaned in to kiss Jim's forehead. "We need you."

Jim found himself surprised. He knew why he needed them, why he needed their brilliance and their caring and all the rest. But he'd never thought too hard about why they needed him. Bones, always freakishly perceptive, read the look on his face and laughed weakly.

"Because you keep us fun, Jim. Without you, Christine and I would be serious all the time. We need you to remind us to be alive."

Jim smiled then, and finally looked up. "So can we have please-don't-die sex?"

Bones barked a short laugh. "Jesus, kid. You got no damper on your libido, do you?" But he was stripping, and pushing Jim onto the bed, and Christine was kissing him and Bones was inside him with Christine beneath him, each stroke of the other man propelling Jim into her, hot and close and, unbidden, a thought crested in Jim's mind, _This is love._

But he didn't say it. He knew better than to scare Christine and Bones with thoughts of _love_ and _forever_ and all the rest of that sentimental pap because Christine had run from Earth rather than have it, and Bones had lost it and love or not, Jim wasn't going to ruin it with these two.

So when Christine panted and whined beneath him, short spasms of _yes_ and _Jim_ and _please_ he kissed her rather than say the words, and when Bones stiffened and came, if he muttered "Ours, all ours" against the back of Jim's neck, well, then it was love, and it was okay.

\---

Jim was sleeping fitfully when Christine awoke, thoughts of Roger Korby and the flight from Earth and the months of uncertainty before _Enterprise_ and Jim and Leonard falling from her mind as she floated back to reality. It was early – the chronometer read 0424 – and she was wrapped around Jim in a way that was quickly becoming sweaty and uncomfortable. She stirred and stretched, freeing her sleeping right arm from under Jim's shoulders and padded to the bathroom to relieve her aching bladder.

She noticed Leonard when she returned, lying still on Jim's right, staring into the ceiling.

"Leonard?" she whispered, afraid to wake her sleeping captain.

"Hey, darlin'," he smiled, sleep and accent warring for dominance in his voice.

"Can I tell you something?" She slid into his side of the bed, and he pulled her down into a tight embrace.

"Anything."

"I think I- I think I love him," she buried her face in Leonard's chest, embarrassed that she didn't realize it before Jim was going off to be brave and stupid and probably dead.

Leonard stroked her hair softly, his long fingers twining through her curls. "I know, me too."

She stiffened a little then, and he chuckled, feeling her move against him.

"And me?" She didn't want to ask, but Christine was apparently a masochist in more than a sexual way.

"I ain't gonna say, 'Course I love you, you handful,' if that's what you want. You think I could say that?"

She shook her head, feeling a sob well up in her throat.

"But if I could say it, I would. You- you and Trouble there- are the best things that've happened to me since Jo was born."

Christine nodded, the hair of his chest scratchy against her cheek.

"And I don't want him to go any more than you do."

She smiled then, breathing in the smell of sweat and her boys off Leonard's skin, and looked up at him. "We could tie him to the bed."

"Or break his legs."

"Or hide all his pants."

A low groan sounded next to them, and Jim rolled over, his blue eyes sparkling. "Yes on the first one, no on the second, and you think taking my pants would stop me?"

Against her will, Christine laughed. Leonard scowled.

"How long you been listening?"

"Long enough to know you both love me," he whispered, scooting closer to the two of them.

"And what if we do?"

"I love you, too. I love you two. I just didn't want to scare you away."

This time it was Leonard's turn to laugh. "You couldn't, kid, not in a million years."

\---

The problem with morning is that is always came, whether Jim wanted it to or not.

And the problem with a secret mission was that there was no reason for Christine and Leonard to follow Jim to the transporter room for goodbyes, so instead they sat in his quarters in silence, not saying all the things begging to be said.

\---

The feeds started covering the approach of the Coronet when it was six hours out from Earth, after he'd been onboard for a day and a half. They were all abuzz with the idea of Lowther, _the_ George Lowther, finally coming into Fleet custody.

Jim didn't know if he wanted to laugh or cry or vomit.

He chose vomit. Pike was there, rubbing his back as he heaved nothing into the bowl.

"I'm not ready," Jim sighed shakily, when he was sure his stomach was free of mucus and bile, that his body couldn't find anything else to expel. "This is a bad idea."

Pike hummed, low in this throat, and sat on the floor next to him.

"All the best ideas are bad ideas, son." Jim hated him in that moment, hated him more than he ever hated Frank or Number One or Winona or Sam. "But we're building a world. Your little sister – we named her, Emily Kestra – Emily is gonna grow up in a world without those bastards who chased you across half the galaxy."

Jim heaved again, air and misery, at the thought of that baby. Number One was seven months along, huge and glowing. And they chose a name.

"Christine's going to cry," he rasped, his throat burning, and Pike stood to get him water. "When they see the feeds, Christine is going to cry."

He and Pike were both rough looking, as self-respecting pirates should be when they were captured. Rope burn circled their wrists, and both sported bruised faces and bodies and unevenly shaved heads. Pike had a lovely set of chipped teeth, and Jim would soon be sporting a broken arm. Giotto had promised him that. But Christine was going to cry, seeing her Golden Boy in pieces.

Pike handed Jim the glass of water and settled down again. "Rinse your mouth out," he ordered. "And Christine has McCoy. He'll take care of her."

Jim didn't ask who would take care of him, but he thought it. Hard.

\---

Chris had done his best to prepare Jim, explaining the Admirals and their proclivities; Archer and his knives, Komack and his drugs, One and her calm, unwavering questioning, Barnett and the brutal beatings.

But Jim wasn't ready. Jim was letting his nerves win, and it looked pathetic.

They stood on the transporter pad, preparing to go down to their little adventure, and Chris was worried that Jim was gonna puke again. The kid looked wrecked. Not that Chris looked better, but the pale sliver of bone peeking through the skin of Jim's broken arm was brutal and he was starting to hyperventilate.

Well, you have to do what you have to do. Chris signaled Giotto's heavy to hold off on the handcuffs, hauled back, and slapped Jim across the face, as hard as he could.

"THE FUCK?" Jim roared, turning on Chris.

"Good, you're angry. Stay angry," Chris nodded at the goon, placing his hands behind his back. "They're gonna hurt you, they're going to get psychological. We talked about that. But you stay angry, and they can't crawl under your skin, hear me? Let them work you up, and you lose. The only way to win-"

"-is not to play," Jim finished. "I know." Chris nodded, and felt a rush of relief as Jim straightened his posture and seemed a little more himself for a moment. Chris was almost sure he saw a smile playing across his lips. "I'm gonna do a back flip," Jim murmured. "On the feeds, while being escorted."

Chris smiled, too. "You do that, son. You do that."

Twenty-five minutes later, being frog marched into Fleet HQ by Giotto himself, Jim did his back flip. Chris, to his great credit, didn't laugh.

\---

Jim hurt. Every part of him hurt. The first thing they did when they brought him in was heal all his hurts, and set about giving him new ones. They'd worked him over six or seven times, and all he'd done was swear and insult and bleed. He bled a lot. Archer had cut off his thumbs – one for insisting his name was Inigo Montoya, one for asking if Archer fucked anything besides beagles. They'd asked him, over and over, who George Lowther was. He gave all the names he could think of, until Archer produced an actual hot poker and threatened to burn his tongue out if he wouldn't talk. Then Jim had given his own name, and Archer had smiled.

"Good boy, Jimmy."

Jim, crouched on all fours where they'd dropped him, spat blood at the Admiral's feet. "Why do you care? Isn't it enough to have George Kirk's son?"

"You don't get it, do you?" Archer smiled, and Jim thought it was more a bearing of teeth than anything with warmth. "You, Mr. Kirk, are a _pirate_. Your father was a pirate, your mother probably still is a pirate. You rob people. You kill people. You rape and pillage. Me? I'm the good guy."

"I never raped anyone and I never killed anyone who didn't deserve it."

"Isn't that nice for you?" Archer was still grinning his predator's grin. "Meanwhile I uphold the peace and I sleep soundly at night-" he stopped to kick Jim in the stomach "-knowing that the people I love are safe from you."

They'd patched Jim up half-heartedly then, and thrown him back in his cell, still seeping blood from the poor job they did on his thumbs, told him he could have water if he begged. So he begged for a blowjob until some anonymous Fleeter came and kicked him in the face. He'd had a nice nap then, but then he woke up and he _hurt_.

They left him his PADD, and weakly, he reached out and tapped up one of the messages he knew Pike recorded ahead of time. The familiar, worn face filled his screen, a tired smile and blue eyes.

"I ever tell you how I met your dad?" Pike's voice warmed Jim, and the idea of the story caused a weak smile to break across his face. "I didn't have shit to my name once I ran off from the Fleet. Made it out to Cygnet XIV, figured I could find some work at the docks or something. I had the flight training, one thing I can thank the Fleet for. But I had no real proof or references, I was young, and the Fleet had put out a notice on me.

"My third month there, I'm barely scraping by and your dad and his ship passed through. Your mom and dad were finishing a deal in this bar I frequented, cheap back alley place. They were getting payout for some job or another. A fight broke out, bad one, the owner ran all kinds of dangerous shit. We all ended up behind the bar and George passes me an extra phaser.'Think you can handle it kid?' I nailed a guy to show I could." Pike laughed warmly, and Jim laughed with him, wishing he could have seen them, young and alive and vibrant. "We all fought for a bit. Then I showed them the best way out before the patrols came. We managed to make it out with the cash.

"So we laughed like hell and ended up on a roof drinking crap gin. We talked for a couple hours and before they left your dad leans in and says,'0900, dock 6, you're gonna show me if you can fly as well as you say, stud.' So after about 2 hours of sleep, still buzzed mind you, I show up and he put me through the paces. Rest is history."

Jim laughed weakly. Pike always was a shit storyteller, but still, the presence in his cell was better than water. And that was good, because it would be a long time before he would have anything like comfort.

\---

Jonathan Archer was proud a few things in his life.

He was proud of the work he'd done to make the Fleet what it was when he was a young man, shipping out on one of the first ships to see the galaxy. He was proud of the capture and execution of Jacques Moineau, the first Fleeter to go rogue, the man who founded the fucking Guild. He was proud of the son he and Komack had raised, the man he had become as he aged.

But catching James Kirk, getting him to admit to years of piracy and murder and mayhem? That was the crown jewel in a glittering life. All he needed was a conviction for Pike and the location of Winona, and Archer knew he could retire as a happy man.

It was all so close.

\---

Jim was high as a fucking starship. In the days after, when he'd healed and recouped and all that, Jim would remember what he frantically tapped into the PADD, and laugh at the half-remembered verses of "The Jabberwocky" and conversations with the floor. But in the moment, it was all manic energy and frantic heartbeats and trying to keep his lungs steady. They'd had a few sessions where Archer had carved words into his stomach, "GEORGE" and "PIRATE" and worse. Erasing every time until he settled on "SCUM" and every time Jim looked down he saw their seething hatred staring back up. He'd laughed at Archer, who took his ear in retribution.

It hurt, it hurt like a blade of fire, and Jim screamed his agony through a raw throat as the skin parted and tendons tore. Jim felt sick as blood began to gush down his cheek and neck, felt the sobs well up as Archer tenderly - a mockery of tenderness, a farce of caring - brushed gauze to the gaping wound and tossed his ear on the ground.

Jim was reeling in the sickening _squelch_ his flesh made when, swiftly, Archer brought the cauterizer up to the hole in the side of Jim's head.

To his credit, Jim didn't black out when he smelled his own flesh burning. He took deep breaths, and he tried to remember what Pike told him, about visualizing.

 _The beach on Omicron Theta. Building a sandcastle with Christine, laughing at Bones, who's under the umbrella, scowling and muttering about freckles. He's fully dressed - a pair of khaki Bermuda shorts and a t-shirt that has the name of some drug. It's dusky green, and he looks beautiful. Dark zinc sunblock on his nose._

 _Christine is wearing that sweet blue bikini, more thread than fabric. In a minute, she'll tackle Jim into the surf and command him to make out with her like a music video._

 _When night falls, Bones'll start a fire, and he'll grill peaches over it, and chicken, and bake potatoes in the ashes. Best meal of Kirk's life._

 _And they'll watch the galaxy move through the sky after that, while the fire dies, holding on to each other. They won't even bother to have sex, they'll just be close, and in love._

It doesn't help a lot, but at least he can pretend that the burning is sunlight, that the pain is rocks, and that he has two people who love him, people who want to see him again, and eat grilled peaches on a beach on Omicron Theta.

\---

Komack's men had brought him food. Real food, a fucking hamburger. Food he could _eat_. The first food he'd had in two days, or maybe six hours. He didn't even think about it, he just ate.

It took almost no time for him to realize the mistake, realize he'd been dosed. The floor had started telling him secrets, which seemed uncharacteristic for a floor, and his fingers got numb. So he did what Pike said he should, what he'd been prepared for. He jogged in place, he moved. He tried to burn through it. He was starting to feel normal, he guessed it was somewhere between 15 minutes and an hour later - time was weird in that place, so weird - when the videos started.

The whispers started first, low and cruel. Just the suggestions of voices. And then the walls started flickering.

Soon enough, Jim was huddled on the floor, trying not to hear his mother laugh while Pike was beaten on one wall, and the other three showed clips from various high-profile pirate executions. He was trying to tune it out, he really was. Trying and failing.

It should have been a relief when it stopped. But Jim was too smart - or too dumb - to trust it.

Archer came and kicked him in the ribs a bit, but Jim was finding he cared less and less. If the steel toes cracked bones, if breathing was fucking agony, who gave a shit? Eventually it would be over. They'd kill him, and he'd be able to rest, be able to breathe without being stabbed with every gasp.

"Goodbye."

Jim looked up. The voice had echoed in his small cell, but there was no source. More games, then.

"Goodbye."

It was a familiar voice.

"Hello, boys. And, I guess, goodbye."

This time the whole phrase. And then, sickeningly, an explosion.

Oh. _Oh._

The walls flickered to life and there, surrounded by explosives on a transporter pad, was George S. Kirk, Sr. He smiled, and Jim retched, the drugged hamburger reemerging as a puddle on the floor. "Hello, boys. And, I guess, goodbye." And the display flared and whited out.

Over. And. Over.

Jim lost count of how many times his father died before he couldn't take it anymore. "Turn it _off_!" He was screaming at no one, his fractured ribs burning with the effort, but he knew he was being watched. The stink of his own vomit, the sour bile in his mouth and the feeling of a thousand eyes on him seemed to crawl all over his skin with soft spider feet while his father became stardust on every wall.

"Hello, boys. And, I guess, goodbye."

"TURN IT THE FUCK OFF! ARCHER! KOMACK!"

Jim clutched at his sides from the power of his own breath, but he didn't care. There was no reply, but he didn't expect one. He didn't expect much. This was fucking unfair.

 _Good, you're angry. Stay angry._

The thought came from nowhere, but Jim grabbed at it frantically. _Stay angry_. He could do that. Without thinking, he moved his hand to his cheek, feeling the bruise Pike had left. He could stay angry.

"Hello, boys," George grinned, in stereo.

"And I guess," Jim whispered, staring at the PADD they had left him, "goodbye."

\---

When they found out Jim had hacked the feeds and replaced them with cartoons, Archer used Jim's face to smash the PADD and pulled the toenails off both his feet.

Jim just laughed. He was angry. He could stay angry.

\---

He'd been in holding for what was either a week or a day and a half when they fucked up.

He'd decided not to eat anything they gave him - yes, he was hungry, but it was what Pike would call a loser's game – fast or fly. So he drank the water and chewed on the buttons from his stylish prison outfit. It was working.

Well, it had been working. Until Komack caught wise, marched into the room, and shoved a hypo into Jim's neck.

It was fun for a while. Chasing the high, moving like Pike had instructed him, keeping himself calm. And then his skin started to itch at the injection site.

 _Fuck_.

"HEY!" Jim knew they were watching. They were always watching. His ribs were still cracked or broken or whatever, and the yelling hurt, but he was starting to itch in his veins, and he knew he only had a few minutes before his lungs began to constrict.

"HEY! Whatever this is, I'm allergic!" He was yelling towards the ceiling, towards the traitorous walls.

"Stupid boy," Komack's mocking voice echoed in the small cell. "You're fine."

Jim bared his neck, where he was sure an angry red welt was rising. "This look fine to you, Komack? It looks like fucking anaphylaxis to me!"

The silence stretched into infinity as Jim began to scratch at his skin, breaths coming hard with each jagged gasp.

Finally, Komack's voice returned, as Jim's heart rate crested from _allegrissimo_ to _presto_. "Face the wall, prisoner Kirk. Place your hands against it. Medical assistance is coming."

Jim smiled ruefully. "Too fucking late," he gasped, sinking to his knees. He lay there for what might have been thirty seconds or five years, darkness encroaching and air sparse. The last thing he saw, before the sharpness in his neck and the calming grip of unconsciousness, were shiny black boots.

\---

Chris underestimated how hard this would be.

It wasn't the torture, being held under water until he was clawing desperately at their hands, it wasn't being chained to the wall and kept awake, it wasn't even the uncertainty and worry about Jim. The hardest part, by leaps and bounds, was sitting in the same room as the woman carrying his child and not being able to touch her.

"Tell me who did that to you?" he sneered, jerking his chin towards her belly.

"None of your business, Mr. Lowther."

"Oh, are you fat AND forgetful? The name's Pike."

She smiled, something cold and predatory. "Right. Pike. That makes the young man - James Kirk? He's Lowther, then?"

Pike raised an eyebrow. "Who?"

"The young man you were brought in with, Mr. Pike."

"You'd be pretty if you weren't fat."

"And you'd be less obnoxious if you weren't a pirate."

Pike laughed. "Not a pirate. A legitimate small businessman."

One rolled her eyes and flipped her comm open. "Mitchell? Mr. Pike isn't feeling like talking. Why don't you come convince him?"

Pike laughed, a harsh sound, drowning out Mitchell's response.

"Marry me," he shot. It was stupid, he knew, but she was beautiful and strong and goddamnit, he was _tired_.

She broke his cheekbone with the resulting punch, but when she stood over him, proud and glowing, she gave the slightest nod.

It was so fucking hard.

\---

Jim was sore and tired and cold.

Sore and tired and cold and still in fucking prison.

He was lying on the floor, still in his cell, but he was breathing. So he had that going for him, which was nice.

He ached, though, and there was something beeping. Slowly, he reached out for the noise, and his fingers connected with a PADD lying just within his reach. He pulled it to him slowly, and read the file asking for his attention.

 _Not that it will do you any good, but you're allergic to Trihexyphenidyl. It's not a common drug, but it's a short acting mood-elevator with euphoriant effects and a muscle relaxant. Used to be a treatment for Parkinson's._

 _I healed as much as they let me. Your left rotator cuff was shredded, you had 6 broken ribs, a broken nose, fractured eye socket, shitty patching on your ear and thumbs, and were missing the toenails on your feet. I also took that word off you._

 _I'll be back in 3 hours, and they've been ordered not to fuck with you for 24. Try to keep your heart rate down and your spirits up, son._

 _-Rich Kepis, MD_

Jim skimmed it a few times before he noticed the name. It was- it had to be. An anagram. For Chris Pike. Whoever really healed him, whoever was there, was from Pike. Or One. And there were three hours to go.

Three hours were nothing.

\---

When the door opened, Jim expected Pike or Number One to hand him a phaser and tell him to go nuts.

He was ready.

Instead, Admirals Archer and Komack entered, flanked by a number of large, dumb-looking Fleeters.

"Little Jimmy," Komack's voice was sticky sweet. "How are you feeling?"

Jim coughed, dryly. _Always let them underestimate you._ "Okay, I guess."

"We're not allowed to hurt you much." Archer was actually pouting as he said it, but it still ran shivers up Jim's spine. He gave into them, trying to look defeated. "But we can still hurt you a little. Tell us the whereabouts of Winona Kirk."

"Up your ass, dick. She's dead."

Komack made a motion, and two of the goons surged forward to grab Jim and haul him to his feet. Archer smiled his serpent's grin and flexed his fingers. Jim noticed, for the first time, he was wearing gloves. With- oh fuck.

The first slap across his face was hard, and it sung like hornets. Fucking _gloves_ wrapped in fucking _razor wire_. What the fuck was wrong with these people? Jim didn't cry out, but he let a small groan escape his lips.

"It's so strong," Komack purred, moving closer to Jim, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Doesn't scream. Where is Winona Kirk?"

"Fucking dead! Orbiting some planet as space dust!"

Without warning, Komack grabbed Jim's right arm and yanked, pulling it out of the socket again. He felt the arm go numb, and actually yelped at the suddenness of the attack.

"Oh, there it goes." Archer smiled, stepping in to punch Jim in the gut. He groaned. "Reminds me of his brother."

Komack nodded and laughed at the flash in Jim's eyes. "Oh, you didn't know? We've had him for _ages_. Picked up a tip from your darling uncle - Francis de Soto? You knew him as Frank?"

Jim said nothing, but winced at the feeling of Archer's barbed hand, clamping around his left bicep. "Yes, good old Frank. Told us about a young man he knew, name of Samson Church. He has the same eyes as you. Now, _where_ is Winona Kirk? And don't say she's dead. She'd get a funeral from your _Guild_. We'd know."

Jim looked into Archer's face, searching for truth. Nothing came back. "You lie," Jim rasped. "Even if I didn't know where Sam is, and I do, I'd know if you had him."

"Would you?" Archer asked, releasing Jim. He signaled the goons, one of whom held Jim while the other shoved his shoulder roughly back into the socket. Then they dropped him, allowing Jim to sink to his knees in shock and pain, feeling like his arm was on fire.

"No," Komack hissed, the words venomous in Jim's ears. "I don't think you would. Where is your mother, stupid boy?"

"Second star to the right, straight on till morning."

Komack laughed, cold and a little insane. Archer was giving orders for Jim to be shackled, ankles and wrists together, and the soldiers hopped to his words. When Jim was restrained, feeling for all the world like a colt at the Universe's worst rodeo, the cuffs gave him a sharp electric shock.

"Those little toys should loosen your tongue. Get some rest," Komack grinned. "If you can."

Jim lay on the floor, listening to the footsteps start to head away from him, before looking up at their halt. Archer was standing at his door, admiring his handiwork.

"You know what the best part of healing you is, kid?" He waited a long minute, and Jim cursed the drama teacher who told Archer about timing as the admiral stalked close and stooped to haul him up by his hair. When Jim was on his knees again, bent painfully like a bow, Archer whispered in his ear. "I get to do it all again." And, with as much malice as he could, he spit in Jim's face before releasing him and watching him slump back to the floor.

Jim held his breath and counted to ten, interrupted at eight by another electric shock. When the door slid shut behind them, he focused on relaxing the muscles that had tensed up. He sighed deeply, feeling Archer's spit run down his cheek to mingle with the blood from his new wounds.

Pike had better hurry the goddamn hell up.

\---

Jim had actually managed to doze a bit when the door slid open again.

He glanced up weakly, starting at the imposing figure facing him.

"They said they trussed you up pretty for me," she grinned, and produced a key from her sleeve.

"Number One," he croaked, his mouth dry.

"James T. Kirk," she replied, still not moving towards him. "Alias George Lowther, alias John Christopher, alias David Kuhn, alias Tristan Adams. How are you doing today, James?"

Jim grunted as another wave of electricity crested through him. "Peachy."

"You know why I'm here. I know you do." She was calm and collected and Jim wasn't sure what she wanted. He'd thought she would be freeing him and sending him to do his part by now. "We have about 3 minutes until things start to get fun, so let me tell you a quick story, shall I?"

Jim rolled his eyes. She was playing for the cameras. Fine. "Not going anywhere."

"When I as a little girl, I loved my father more than anything. My mother had died in childbirth, and as is custom on Illyria for children with a parent in mourning, I was raised in - you would call it a crèche. But I saw my father once a year. I was his star shine, he was my sun. And then, when I was ten, my father went off to be an officer in this fine Fleet. He was the security chief on a ship called _Narada_." She paused to let that sink in. Jim knew where it was going now. "He served for fiftenn years, Kirk. And when I was twenty-six, with my own commission, _Narada_ apprehended _Kelvin_. It would have made his career." She reached down to unlock his cuffs then, and he shivered at the icy cold of her hands. "Your father killed mine. Do you understand that?"

He nodded and swallowed, hard. "I-"

"Shut up. I chased you and your mother and brother for a long time. Because command told me to. And because I needed to see the faces of the people whose lives were more important than my father's. And I called it off eleven years ago. Do you know why?"

"Tell me."

"Because I found something better." Absently, she rubbed her hand across her swollen belly. "I found the man whose child I am bearing."

The lights flickered then, and the hallway went dark. One offered Jim a hand and pulled him to his feet. "And you should be thankful I did," she muttered, pressing a phaser into his palm. "Archer is in A-24, Komack in A-36, Barnett in D-34. Pike has Barnett. Go get them."

Jim started out the door, limping a little from the abuses he'd suffered, but paused and turned back to her. "If I had my way, both of our fathers would be alive."

She nodded. "That's nice. Go kill someone."

He went.

\---

Pike had insisted Jim commit all floor plans of the holding they'd be kept in to memory, and as he made his way to Archer, Jim was glad he'd done it. His feet knew where to go, though his brain was fuzzy. The plan had always been for One to divert the guards, so Jim was grateful, but not surprised to meet no one on his way.

The door was sealed; all the doors were sealed. Jim tapped in the code Pike had told him- 36459, EMILY -and was unsurprised that it granted him access with a whistle.

Archer didn't even look up from his console as Jim entered.

"It's about time you got-"

Jim assumed Archer would have said something like, "Those doors unlocked," but the stun setting on Jim's phaser left very little room for conversation. The adrenalin and blood roared in his ears as Jim crossed the room and lifted Archer's head from his desk, exposing the canvas of unmarked skin that was the Admiral's neck.

A feral grin crossed Jim's face and he reached into Archer's jacket for the knife he kept there. "Hello, Johnny," Jim growled, drawing the blade across Archer's jugular and watching the life drain from his now useless body. "And, I guess, goodbye."

\---

The trip to Komack's office took less time, but Komack was more ready.

Jim had made the most of the time that surprise offered him and leapt at the man as he entered the room, tearing the phaser from his grasp and viciously slamming the heel of his hand into the other man's nose before throwing him to the ground and holding him there with a foot pressing on his windpipe, phaser trained between his eyes.

Jim took a moment to observe the formerly sadistic admiral on the floor under his foot, blood gushing from a nose that was surely broken, hands clawing at the immobile column of Jim's leg.

"Archer is dead," Jim growled, just to see the look on Komack's face. It was widely known that they were married, and Jim relished the feeling of complete control delivering the news gave him.

"Liar," Komack gasped.

"Whose blood do you think is on my hands?" Jim sneered, easing his foot enough for Komack to take a few shuddering breaths and respond.

"What do you want?" Komack asked, staring at the phaser. "Money? Power? I can tell you where your brot-"

Jim growled and fired the phaser, set to kill.

"Now you're the liar," he told Komack's body before stooping to slit its throat and turning on his heel without watching him bleed out. He headed towards the rendezvous spot, never noticing the trail of red footprints he left in his wake.

\---

An exhausted smile graced Pike's face as Jim rounded the corner to their meeting place, Number One waiting with him, supporting most of Pike's weight on her slim shoulders. Jim nodded curtly at her and she returned the gesture.

"Dad?"

"Chipped a vertebra or two," Pike grinned, reaching out his hand. "You?"

Jim took the offered hand and pulled Pike away from One, shouldering the older man's bulk. "Irreparably broken," Jim said with a laugh. "Barnett?" he asked, noticing the lack of blood on Pike's hands.

"Cut environment to his office. He's gone. Archer and Komack?"

"Messy piles on their office floors." Jim laughed and pulled Pike into a hug. "We did it Dad." He grinned. "We really did it."

Pike gripped him back, and Jim felt the transporter take them as they hugged, jubilant and _tired_.

[Masterpost](http://community.livejournal.com/velocicopter/3262.html)|[part 2](http://community.livejournal.com/velocicopter/2638.html)


	3. FIC: If We Lived And Were Good (Part 2/4)

_**FIC: If We Lived And Were Good (Part 2/4)**_  
The first thing Giotto did was usher them to sickbay, which, now that the excitement was wearing down, Jim thought, was an awesome idea. The medic, a rather attractive man called M'Benga, clucked over Jim's wounds.

"Heal everything," Jim groaned. He didn't want Bones and Christine seeing this. They couldn't.

But M'Benga shook his head. "Can't. Your system is overtaxed, and these cuts on your face are infected. I can do a little, but you need time and rest."

"Then knock me the fuck out," Jim growled, surprised at the ferocity in his voice.

The medic stared for a long moment before turning and walking away. Jim glanced at Pike on the next bed. He was staring back, his brow knitted in concern.

"What?"

Pike just shook his head and lay back on the biobed. "It's been a long day," he muttered. "M'Benga is right. Get some rest."

Jim shook his head. He wanted to rest. He wanted to heal. But more than that, he wanted to forget how _good_ it felt to kill Komack and Archer.

Pike had taught him one primary rule: _Only kill when you have to._ Jim had scoffed at it at the time, thinking it was silly. There were corollaries, things like not killing in cold blood and not torturing. Jim rubbed his hands together, feeling like they were still tacky from the drying blood he'd washed off.

"Killing in a rage," Jim mused, almost to no one, though he knew Pike was listening. "Leaves you feeling sticky. Between your fingers." He didn't glance at Pike, but he felt the older man's eyes on his back, and went on. "I killed them. Both of them. And it just feels. It feels..." Jim stammered.

"It feels shitty," Pike said. "It feels like you were out of control."

Jim was shocked to feel tears well up in his eyes. He'd just survived three days (was that all? three lifetimes.) of intense torture, and the idea of killing his torturers was making him fucking _cry_?

"It feels like I was the person they thought I was," he muttered, barely audible over the beeping of the machines in the medbay.

Pike made a noncommittal noise deep in his throat, and Jim turned to look at him. "Really looking for a 'You're not a monster' or a 'You're a good person' or a fucking _hug_ here, Dad."

"You're not a monster, you're a decent person, and if you want a hug, get off your ass and come get one."

Jim turned to stand, but for the first time, he noticed Number One in a chair next to Pike's bed, silently holding his hand, and changed his mind. "Thanks, Dad," he murmured, and lay down to rest. Pike made a soft noise that might have been comforting, but somehow, Jim thought it wasn't quite aimed at him.

\---

Jim woke to the feeling of a dermal regenerator on his arm and the sound of soft feminine laughter.

"Christine?" He was confused, at first, about what he was doing in sickbay without Bones hovering over him, hypoing him every three minutes. "Bones?"

"You're on _Coronet_ , son."

Jim's eyes flew open. Pike. Coronet. Fleet. Number One. Fuck.

He must have made a face or a noise, because the next thing he knew, soft hands were pressing a glass of water into his lips, and he was swallowing as the liquid ran down his throat.

The glass pulled back, and Jim looked into the only eyes in the universe he thought could be bluer than his.

"Thanks, Number One."

She nodded. "Sure."

He groaned and tried to sit up, but the shooting pains in his ribs stopped him from getting far.

"I-" She glanced over her shoulder at Pike. "I have something for you."

Jim furrowed his brow. "Is it a branding iron, because-"

She rolled her eyes. "That was a pure fiction invented by your brother to torment you."

Jim hung his head. "I know. Sorry. But- can I just say this?"

He waited for her nod.

"You were the bogey man when I was little. It was 'Behave or Number One will get you.' And you wanna waltz in here and marry Pike? Yeah, okay. But why the hell do I trust you won't just get to _Enterprise_ and then activate a beacon that brings the wrath of your little friends down on us?"

"I don't owe you anything-"

Pike coughed behind her. "No, One, you don't. But I do." He took a deep breath and beckoned her to his side. She sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, and reached down to take his hand. "Jim, you trust her because I love her. Because I trust her. She- she's not the person who chased you. I fell for this woman here the first time I saw her. It was dumb. It was reckless, but it was _love_. And so I started slipping her info. The things that, that when I found them out, I left Fleet training. The Tarsus response and the Talos massacre and the razing of Elysium. She came to the same conclusions as I did. Jim," Pike sighed heavily, and dropped One's hand to grab something from his bedside table and handed it to her. "You don't have to trust her. You don't have to like her. But I do. So respect that."

Jim felt the familiar panic well up in his chest. "She's taking you away."

"You'll always be welcome-"

"Bullshit! She's making you _leave_ me."

Pike just stared at him, and the silence stretched out into infinity before Kirk dropped his head and muttered, "I don't want you to go."

"I know, son. But I am. You're more than ready."

Jim looked at One, still sitting awkwardly on Pike's bed. "You have to take care of him. He's all the family I got."

One nodded. "I know."

"And he gets caught up in his work and forgets to eat and then he gets all cranky. And he drinks terrible beer, and he likes horses and- and he loves you." Jim didn't add _more than he loves me_. He didn't need to. The words floated in the space between the biobeds, looking for a soul to burden.

One coughed uncomfortably, and crossed the divide, through the predatory words, to Jim's side, thrusting a PADD and two data chips at him. "Christopher told me about your- about Leonard McCoy and Christine Chapel." Jim nodded, taking the offered tech. "So I did some digging. The data chips. One is Leonard's daughter, Joanna Darnell, on her last birthday, a feed of the party taken from a Fleet satellite." Jim felt his breath catch in his throat, but One kept talking. "The other is Christine's parents. They were tagged as related to a pirate suspect, so the feed is from inside their home. I thought- well." She laughed, and Jim was shocked at how _human_ the noise was. "I thought if you were going to go to Earth, you should bring them back a gift."

Jim just stared at her, words somehow escaping him.

"I thought you might-" she reached to take the chips back, but Jim hugged them tightly against his chest.

"No! I mean- Thank you, Number One. They'll - I appreciate it."

She smiled and awkwardly patted his shoulder. He put his hand over hers, only to pull it back suddenly and gape at her fingers. "Pike. You _dog_."

Both One and Jim turned to look at Pike, who was doing his best to look innocent. And failing very hard.

"Did you-" Jim was now waving One's captive hand about, and she snatched it back from him with an annoyed noise. "Did you get _married_ while I was _asleep_?"

Pike laughed, and One smiled. "Of course I did, son. What, you think I was going to let you have a chance to make a fuss?"

Jim scowled. "No! I thought- I thought we'd go back to _Enterprise_ and you'd let me do it, which would be awesome."

Pike and One shared a long look. Finally, One turned back to Jim. "I wasn't so sure about sharing my wedding with the other woman-"

Jim snorted. "Yeah, whatever."

"-by which she means _Enterprise_ , not you, brat," Pike finished, "but, we were talking and since we took this one from you, in addition to being her big brother, how would you like to be Emily's godfather?"

Jim blinked. "Wait, for real?"

"Of course."

"You think I would say no to that?"

"Never."

Jim grinned and he held out a hand to Number One, who took it gingerly. "I guess this makes us family," he laughed, pulling her into a hug that easily ranked in the Top Three Awkward Hugs In The Universe.

One patted his back slowly. "Right. Family."

Jim laughed, and released her.

"Thanks, Dad."

"I love you, Jim."

Jim's mouth went dry. Pike must be fucking _insane_. "No you don't."

"Yeah, I do. And you love me, too. And you should comm McCoy and Chapel."

Jim just stared, before shaking his head slowly. Right. Things to do.

\---

The message waiting light was blinking on Leonard's console when he got to his office.

It had been a rough few days since Jim beamed down to the goddamn planet. Giotto had hit the ship with an EMP and, though no one had been hurt, they'd been dead in the water for hours before Chekov and Scotty could magic the ship into behaving normally.

Then there had been the briefings and the planning and the insanity of trying to make a plan to break Jim out when Leonard _knew_ he was coming back, but no one else could know it.

So he and Christine huddled together in bed, something achingly missing between them, and they went through the motions in sickbay and they tried to pretend like they weren't scared out of their minds. Jim's assistant, Rand, brought them actual, honest-to-god hot chocolate at night, and they sat and talked for hour about all the weird things they missed; Jim's bizarre stash of coloring books, his stupid messy hair, and his whining whenever he had to do something that involved getting his feet wet. Leonard missed it all, and he hated himself for missing it, because it was just one more thing the Universe was going to find a way to take from him, like it had taken his daughter, his marriage and his father.

And now there was static on the feeds that there was an event at a Fleet Detention Center and there had been casualties and the goddamn fool kid hadn't even had the decency to let them know if he was breathing.

It was terribly difficult for Christine.

Leonard began the business of skimming his messages- this one had crotch rot, that one sprained an ankle, all the usual ins and outs of doctoring.

And the last one on the list. Sender Unknown. Leonard was holding his breath as he opened it, and chided himself for acting like some space trash in his inbox could be anything important.

 _I hear on the feeds that there's been a breakout at a Fleet detention center and Admirals Barnett, Komack and Archer are dead._

 _Don't reply, you'll give away your position. But I'll be home soon._

 _Yours for always, JTK_

Leonard sat frozen in front of his console, reading and rereading the message. He didn't even look up when his door whispered open- he knew who it was before she spoke.

"Did you--?"

"I did."

He looked up then, and took in Christine's grin. Leonard knew he was damn lucky to have her, doubly lucky to have her and Jim, together. He'd been pissed as fuck when they'd brought him aboard, ready to step off at the first port. But Jim - still Captain Lowther back then, how strange - had convinced him to stay for a year.

 _Just a year, McCoy. You get a double cut of anything we make, I don't make you kill or torture, and if you wanna leave after a year, you're free to go._

He'd fought it internally, but agreed eventually. What the hell else did he have? And Christine's interest in him hadn't been a secret. Leonard figured that, if nothing else, he could spend a year with a sweet little nurse, making money to send to Jo, and if they got apprehended by the Fleet, he didn't have a contract on file. He was safer than anyone had any right to be on a goddamned flying death trap.

And then Jim had asked him to start coming to the dinners he and the senior staff had, and Leonard had been shocked at how much he actually _liked_ these people. He actually found himself caring if Chekov and McKenna were going to stop fighting over Sulu, if Spock was ever going to smile back at Uhura, if Scott was ever going to sleep with Rand. It was dumb. It was beneath him, but it felt like family, and a part of Leonard had been looking for that since he'd been chased off Earth.

And if Jim had started making it a point to stop down by sickbay every few days, and if he had a crooked smile that made Leonard's heart do little stupid flip flops, well, then it was just a matter of time before Jim and Christine put their damn nymphomaniac heads together and connived to share Leonard. Not that he was complaining.

But Christine was grinning at him now, and Jim was on his way back and _alive_ , and the room was inexplicably misty. So the warmth of her lips on his, the peal of her laugh, the exuberant way she assured him that they'd shackle that damn fool of a captain to the ship if they had to, because he was _never_ leaving again, not ever - it all felt good. It felt right.

Somehow, it felt like home. It actually felt like home.

\---

Jim stole a moment with Pike before they left _Coronet_ , time to just be them for the last time.

"They told me-" he exhaled raggedly. "They told me they had Sam. They said they'd tell me where he was, let me see him. If I gave them what-" Jim found he couldn't finish the thought.

"What they wanted," Pike supplied. "But it wasn't true, Jim. It was their game, it was Fleet bullshit. Can't win by playing."

"How do you know?"

"Because if Sam had ever crossed into that detention center, One would know. And she knows how important you are to me, how important he is to me."

Jim studied Pike's face closely, looking for a sign of something. What, he couldn't say.

"I don't-"

"I don't care, Jim. You don't have to like her or trust her. I do."

Jim nodded. This was the wall. This was the barrier between them now, that Pike was fucking giving in to someone who had tormented Jim, tormented his _family_ for so long.

"What did Winona say, when you told her?"

Pike smiled, sadly. "You mother isn't speaking to me. She was mad enough when I took you on. She was livid about the attack. She went apoplectic about One."

Jim nodded. "Did you tell her we were okay?"

"Of course I did. She's not talking to me, but I'm still talking to her."

They sat silently for a moment, and Jim cursed the first time Pike had met One, cursed his father for killing hers, cursed the Universe for having such a sick fucking sense of humor.

"If you wanted to get married," Jim muttered, "why not my mom? Make you my real dad and all."

Pike laid a hand on Jim's shoulder. "Your mom and I tried. It didn't work. Would've made things simpler, but it didn't."

Jim swallowed hard. "Is that- when you stopped being around, when I was little. Is that why?"

Pike nodded. "Put us - your mom and me - together for too long and it all becomes about your dad and that's not what anyone needed. We brought up too many ghosts for each other."

Jim smiled sadly. "You really happy, dad? With One and a baby on the way and not being a pirate anymore?"

"I'm always gonna be a pirate, kid. You retire from the job, you don't retire from who you are. But yeah, I'm happy. Happier than I've ever been before."

Jim fought down the urge to hug Pike or cry or something else stupid. He had done enough stupid things in the past week. He was saved by the chirping of the comm, and Giotto's rasping voice telling them _Enterprise_ was in range. Jim's stomach turned to water at the thought of it. He hadn't been ready to leave, but he was even less ready to return, to face the world they'd created. To face it without Pike.

"We gotta go, son. We gotta go home."

Jim nodded and stood, offering Pike a hand up and then passing him the new cane he was sporting. He was expected to make a full recovery, but for now, he was hobbling. At least the cane made him somewhat distinguished looking, and was a convenient hiding place for any number of weapons. "Right."

They started to make their way down to the transporter room, slower than Jim would have gone on his own, but still a bit too fast for his tastes. Pike didn't speak, and neither did Jim. Somehow, they didn't need to.

\---

Jim materialized on the pad, golden and gorgeous, and Christine wondered how, even bruised and cut and utterly miserable looking, Jim could look so goddamn _beautiful_.

He was grinning at her, and she lost her professional cool, dropping the tricorder she was holding to run into his arms like the lovestruck 14-year-old she never was.

Jim let out a soft "oof" as she grabbed him, holding him close, but his arms wrapped around her in return, his face breaking into a smile as he rested his cheek on the top of her head.

"Hey, Christine."

"Hey, Jim."

He glanced over her head at Leonard, who was glaring, like he should have been. "Hey, Bones."

"Hey yourself," Bones snorted, but there was a softness to his voice that surprised everyone in the room.

Jim smiled, and Christine thought that she was seeing the sun break through the clouds after a long rain. Then she rolled her eyes at herself, because _really_ , he wasn't gone a week and it was just a smile and she needed to get a grip. For serious.

She loosened her hold on Jim's waist, but kept his hand as he stepped down from the pad. Leonard was there, scanning Jim and clucking at the results. Christine scooped up her own abandoned tricorder and joined in the checkup, which caused Jim to laugh wheezily.

The damage was severe, and parts of it worried Christine more than others; the infected facial lacerations, the torn rotator cuff, the bruised ribs and the chipped patella. And the nerve damage, from what seemed to be electrical stimulation. She felt herself getting angrier and angrier as she scanned the readouts, piecing together parts of what was done to her Golden Boy as she went.

She must have been betraying some kind of emotion, because Jim was looking- well, the word was scared, but that wasn't a word one used on Jim Kirk.

"I don't-" His breath hitched for a second, and she thought the ribs must still be painful. "I don't want you two to treat me."

Christine opened her mouth to reply, but Leonard cut across her with a scoff. "Like hell you don't."

Jim set his jaw, and Christine saw them both gearing up for one of their stupid dick waving fights.

"Not here," she murmured to both of them, acutely aware of the transporter chief and Pike and Number One - which was a thought she'd be dealing with so, so much later - and turned to leave, knowing that, in this at least, they'd follow.

\---

"Let us take care of you."

"No, I don't- No."

"What, suddenly I'm not your doctor? I'm not the one who keeps you from dying when you just HAVE to have tomato soup?"

"You're my doctor, but not in this!"

"Why the goddamn hell not?"

"Because I have to know about it and you shouldn't!"

"Well I fucking want to."

"What?"

Jim and Leonard had been fighting since they got into the CMO's office, angry words back and forth like the worst game of ping-pong Christine had ever witnessed.

"I want to know about it, goddamn it!"

"Why?"

"Because I do!"

"But _why_?"

Yeah, this was gonna get old fast. Time for her to stop them from tearing each other apart. Christine finally cleared her throat, and it was a testament to their relationship that both men immediately stopped glaring at each other to look at her.

"Leonard, we can't make him share if he doesn't want to."

Leonard turned away, looking for all the world like he might put his fist through a bulkhead.

"Jim, we love you. Remember that?" She waited for him to nod, which took a moment longer than it should have, but came eventually. "We love you and we want to help you, but if you shut us out, we can't. You've been through- well, look at you. You know what you went through. And we can take away all the physical shit there is. But don't you dare stand there and tell me they didn't fuck with your mind. And we can help you with that. But only if you let us."

That was how their fights went. Jim and Len screamed and threw punches and sometimes just had really angry sex, which was incredibly hot, but Christine was the salve that cooled the friction of the two of them. She knew how to get them to calm down, to talk normally, to act like fucking people instead of angry little boys. Jim had the good grace to look ashamed.

"My dad."

The words hung there, heavy in the too-quiet room.

"Your dad?" Christine was willing to prompt him.

"They showed me my dad. On all four walls of the cell. My dad dying. They had holos."

Christine made a move towards Jim, but once again, Len beat her to it. He had Jim's face in his hands in a second, and he was studying Jim's eyes intently before leaning in a placing what might have been the tenderest kiss in all of space and time on Jim's lips. Christine was reminded why she loved them, the high dudgeon of their screaming fights, and the softness of their calloused hands when they thought she was the only one looking.

Jim made a desperate sound in his throat and leaned into Leonard, kissing him like it was the end of the universe. When Christine thought they both might suffocate in the ferocity of it, Jim pulled back.

"I watched him die. Over. And over. And-" Jim's voice cracked a little, and Christine was there, too, taking his hand in hers, feeling her heart snap into little fragments.

"It's okay, Jim, you're okay. You're here, we have you-"

"NO!" Jim's scream was almost primal in the way it ripped out of him, and he tore his hand from hers. "No, it's not okay, it's _not_. I killed them, Christine. I killed Archer and I killed Komack and then I _laughed_." He was screaming, and she could tell he knew it and didn't care. "I let them make me that, I let them!"

Christine thought fleetingly that it would have been easier to let him and Leonard beat the fuck out of each other, but if this was what Jim needed, then he could have it. She took a step back, groping for Len's hand while Jim seethed at the universe in general.

But Len wasn't there. He was next to Jim, jamming a hypo into his neck, and catching him as he fell. Christine gaped. "Why-"

"Because he was just going to scream until he hurt himself. He'll be mad when he wakes up, but we'll be ready."

Christine nodded, and pulled the sheets back on the private biobed Len kept in his office, for those times when Jim needed it.

"I'm sleeping here," she said, slipping off her shoes as Len laid Jim on the bed.

"I know." Len nodded. "Me too."

It was the way they worked.

\---

Jim woke with familiar warmth against his side and a thousand new aches all over this body. He took stock of the situation without moving- he was on the biobed in Bones' office, with Christine curled into him and Bones passed out in the chair next to them, a PADD still propped in his lap.

Jim sighed and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and stretching. Christine made a small noise and snuggled deeper into the pillow, her hands groping for the warmth of him, but she stayed asleep.

He loved watching them sleep, his Christine and his Bones. He loved how she relaxed into a smile, how he lost years off his face. He loved them. And, on some level, he knew Bones was right. He had to talk to them. But not yet.

He slid off the bed, groping for his shoes and shirt, preparing to run, to leave, when he noticed Bones was wide awake and staring at him.

"You hypoed me," Jim whispered in a fury, sparing a glance at the still sleeping Christine.

"Damn straight I did," Bones hissed back. Apparently they weren't done fighting, but at least they could be quiet about it, for Christine's sake.

"Why the fuck?"

"Because you were out of control and hurt and you needed a rest."

"You had no right-"

"I had every right."

"I'm not going to talk about it."

"Fine. Don't."

Jim stared. He's never known Bones to give up on anything, least of all a fight. "What?"

Christine piped up from the pillow. "He's not going to make you because he loves you and if you need time, then take time. And come back to me, I'm cold."

Jim shook his head. "I need - I need some space, okay? I'm going to--well, I'm going. I'll be back. Later."

Bones opened his mouth to say something or maybe just scream like the primal animal Jim felt in his chest, but Christine nodded and gestured to the door.

"We're here, Jim. And we love you."

Jim nodded as he left, too afraid of his voice cracking to reply.

\---

Leonard spent the day buried in inventory, counting hypos and pills and packs of saline until he thought he might scream. Christine had made herself scarce, smart girl, and he had time with his thoughts.

And his thoughts were pissing him off.

McCoy was almost unsurprised when Pike let himself into the closet, but he held his tongue and waited for the XO to say something. The two of them stood in silence for a long while, McCoy continuing to work, until Pike cleared his throat.

"He's locked himself in his quarters."

McCoy sighed. "And you want me to get him out?"

"No, I want to know why he's there alone."

McCoy closed his eyes for the time it took to pinch the bridge of his nose, and then glared what he hoped were daggers or phasers or fucking photon torpedoes into Pike. "Because you took him to that place and they _tortured_ him and he doesn't want to see anyone."

"I see." Pike was infuriating in his ability to remain calm under the most ridiculous of circumstances, and McCoy was, in all honesty, not up to dealing with this shit today.

"So go and do whatever it is you do. Fuck his childhood tormentor. Hand him over to someone else who hates him and knows how to hurt him. Or just go in there and gut him your goddamn self, you fucking failure of a guardian."

Pike's only sign of distress was the acute flare of his nostrils and the way he began to unconsciously rub a finger against his thumb.

"Are you done?" he asked, low and deadly.

"No," McCoy replied. "I'm fucking well _not_ done. Who the fuck do you think you are, taking him through that and then leaving the ship? You were just going to make the mess and then fuck off to happily ever after so Christine and I could stitch him back together, fucking inch by inch? I pity your kid, Pike, if that's the kind of father you are."

"As opposed to--" Pike took a deep breath, and McCoy could practically hear him counting to ten. "Fine," Pike sighed, after a minute. "That's all fair. But before you tie my noose, try listening to me, alright?"

McCoy snorted. Right. Like Pike had a goddamn thing to say that could change his mind.

"I didn't think they'd go that far that fast," Pike mumbled after a moment, not making eye contact. "It's my fault. I talked to One. We talked about acceptable things, drugs he was allergic to, lines they shouldn't cross. But they did because I'm not that powerful and she's not that powerful and now I don't really see the point of laying blame, _doctor_ , or how that's going to help Jim."

"Fine. How do you propose to help him then?"

"Fuck if I know," Pike sighed. "I- you want to hear the stupidest thing I've ever said?"

McCoy snorted, rather heroically not asking if Pike ever said anything intelligent.

"I think it might be time to call Winona."

McCoy rolled his eyes. "Brilliant. Call the one person who'll send him into a worse tailspin. Then once he's in a fetal ball on the floor, maybe we can all line up to spit on him!"

Pike smiled, and McCoy found himself wanting to take the grin off his face with a scalpel. "Look, I know Winona and I know Jim. You need to trust me on this. She's what he needs."

"No. I don't need to trust you and, in fact, I don't."

"I'm not the one who let him go off alone to be miserable."

That was fucking _it_. McCoy found himself grabbing a vial of something - hopefully something deadly and painful - and hurling it at the floor at Pike's feet. "No, that's exactly what you did. You're the one who took him to a Fleet jail, you're the one who turned him over, and you're the one who left him to us last night without any kind of warning what he's been through. He was out of control, Pike. You don't- he asked us for space, and because I don't know how they hurt him, I have to give it to him. He barely let me examine him, I don't know if he was cut apart and sewed back together or fucking crucified or raped or _what_ , so you'll forgive me if I trust you about as far as I can throw you, you pompous asshole."

"You're out of line, McCoy-"

The door slid open behind Pike to reveal Christine and a rather shell-shocked looking sickbay, all staring into the closet.

"Fuck you," McCoy growled, not bothering to lower his voice for the audience. "Get the goddamn hell out of my sickbay."

Pike turned on his heel without a word and stalked out.

McCoy turned his back on the assembled gawkers and got back to work. One by one, they followed his lead.

\---

Jim was cradling an old-fashioned photograph in his hands when the comm chimed.

The photo was him and Sam, in shades of gray, playing in their yard on a planet Jim dimly remembered. It was tag or chase or Guild and Fleet, some active game. Jim was six, at most, and running away from Sam with a smile on his face. And waiting, his arms open to catch the racing figure that was Jim's former self, was a younger version of Chris Pike.

Winona had sent it when he'd signed on to serve with Pike, and that raised so many questions, like _why did you keep this?_ and _why didn't you ever talk about him?_ and Jim was more afraid of the asking than the answers. He had gotten the goddamn picture framed for Pike, as a retirement gift. To commemorate their time together, then and on _Enterprise_. But now, somehow, it seemed stupid. Like a waste of time and credits.

And the comm was beeping.

Annoyed, Jim stalked to his console and flipped the channel open. "What?"

"Hi, Jimmy."

The voice was musical, if not soft, and Jim would know it anywhere. He pressed a few buttons and an image slid into focus: Winona. She didn't look so much like her wanted posters anymore. Her hair had faded to gray over the years, and fine lines creased her brow and clustered at the corners of her eyes and mouth. A bit of reconstructive surgery had changed the proportions of her face, too, but Jim was used to that. Winona changed her face every few years, for safety. He knew her not by her features, but by her voice and her eyes.

"Hi, Mom."

Jim knew he looked like shit on a platter, but somehow he didn't care. He brushed the hair out of his eyes and sat, waiting for her to say something. The silence stretched on, both of them trying to figure out why she had called.

"How are you?" she asked at long last, and Jim thought it was a fucking stupid question.

"Great."

"Oh. How's -" she shook her head, and gave Jim a look that could only be interpreted as _neither one of us is buying this, are we?_ He smiled, and she changed tactics. "Pike called me. Said that fucking stupid little stunt he talked you into went really well except they showed you what it looked like when your father died."

Jim nodded. "He showed up and there was a moment when everyone in the room sorta stopped and then he said-"

"Don't tell me."

"Mom?"

"Don't tell me what he said, Jimmy."

"Why not?"

She took a deep breath. Jim scanned his memories for times he had seen her this agitated, and came up mostly blank.

"Because for twenty-seven years I've been living with the assumption that his last words were naming you, and then telling me he loved me. And I don't want to know otherwise."

Jim found himself letting out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. Talking to Winona was like running a marathon. If he didn't pace himself, it just hurt. And he was shit at pacing himself.

"Oh."

"So you killed Archer and Komack?"

"Yeah."

"How's that working out for you?"

"Shitty."

She stared at him, waiting for him to decide he wanted to say anything more. Jim briefly considered letting it sit, but he knew from years of fighting with this woman that it wasn't even remotely worth it to withhold information. Winona Kirk always got what she wanted, though hell should bar the way.

"I killed like an animal. Like I was- I don't know. Like I was out of control, Pike says. And he expected better of me. I- he needs to be proud of me. He's my _dad_ or something, the only one I ever knew- and that's not your fault or anything, please stop looking at me like that- but he wants to be with fucking _Number One,_ and I fucked up and mom, they wrote _words_ in my skin and told me I was scum. And I believed them. And I think I proved'em right."

He stopped talking because he had nothing left to say, and because she was looking at him in such a strange way that Jim had to ask what it was. Winona gave a half laugh.

"You're not perfect, Jimmy, but you're not scum. And you killed them because they needed to die. The how doesn't matter."

Jim nodded and smiled through the rest of her platitudes. Finally, when she seemed done, Jim looked up. "You said he named me?"

"Yeah. I wanted to call you Tiberius-"

"Are you kidding me? That's the worst!"

"Exactly what he said. Said we should name you for my father, call you Jim."

"And he loved me?"

"Oh, Jimmy." Winona's eyes had always looked sad, but in that instant, Jim thought, they also looked so very tired. "He loved you so much. He might be a hero to the people out there, but he didn't do what he did for them. He did it for you, for us, so his family would survive."

Jim swallowed around the lump in his throat. "Would, uh. Do you think he would be proud of me?"

"He'd be more than _proud_."

If a tear escaped Jim's eye, Winona had the good grace not to notice.

"I'm proud of you, too," she smiled, and Jim tried to believe her. They stared awkwardly for a moment- just a moment, before Jim cracked a smile that, despite her face not being the one it was when he was born, echoed hers.

"Thanks, Mom."

She nodded. "So, how are you dealing with this Chris-having-a-baby-with-The-Harpy-of-the-Fleet thing?"

Jim shook his head like he needed to clear it. "I'm pretty much not."

"You gotta know- Chris has always loved you. When he was around when you were little-"

"When you were dating?"

Winona looked surprised, but it didn't move past her eyes. "Yes, when we were together. He loved you and Sam both. When we imploded, he would still send comms asking after you. And when Sam went- when he ran away, and when you followed. He promised me he'd find both of you."

Jim's mouth went dry, but he wasn't sure why.

"Jimmy, you have a kinda shitty mom, and a kinda dead hero dad. But if you and Pike work, then you hold on goddamn tight, and don't you dare left go. You hear?"

"I hear." He knew she loved him and, in whatever way he could, he loved her back. Something sparked at the back of his mind, and before he could stop himself, he blurted out, "Komack and Archer said they had Sam."

Winona actually made a noise like she'd been slapped. "They don't."

"How do you know?"

She closed her eyes. "You know Pike went to the Academy and dropped out? A long time ago, before you and Sam were born, your dad did the same thing. They keep it under the rug and George never liked to talk about it. But he walked out on them. And he was Komack's _pet_ before he did. Which- he left them because he met a girl. Because he met _me_. Komack would destroy worlds to get back at me for that. He has. And if they had Sam, they'd make sure I knew it."

"Did they-?"

"Yes."

Jim closed his eyes. That was why she hadn't wanted him to do this, why it was a "fucking stupid stunt." Because they had known where she was, and they had sent her holos or vids or _something_ to prove what they were doing to Jim.

"You told them I was dead," she said, and if her voice cracked a little, well, Jim was pretty sure that happened when people got old.

"I-"

"Thanks for protecting me, Jimmy."

As a rule, Jim neither blushed nor got all weepy-eyed at declarations of gratitude and/or love, so he definitely did not find a lump growing in his throat or his cheeks burning at his mother's words.

He did, however, suddenly remember several things that he had to do almost immediately.

"Uh, mom, I gotta go. Ship to run, captaining to do and such."

Winona nodded. "Of course. Tell Chris I fulfilled his mission, would you?"

"Yeah."

"And give my regards to- is it still Christine and Leonard?"

Jim rolled his eyes. "Yes, Mom."

"Well, tell them I say hello and to take care of you."

" _Okay_ , Mom."

"Love you, Jimmy."

"Love you too."

Hastily, Jim thumbed the button that would sever the connection, and let out a large dramatic sigh, like the 13-year-old girl he definitely was not. Most of the time.

\---

Jim knew he needed to talk to Christine and Leonard, and he needed to do it sooner rather than later. But first he had to care for his crew.

He recorded a quick message, and watched it through once before broadcasting it.

He smiled when his tired and bruised face appeared on his console, and knew somewhere, Pike was doing the same thing.

 _Hi, everyone._

 _I'm not sure how closely you've been watching the nets, but I'm sure scuttlebutt must have it by now. I am not now, nor have I ever been, George Lowther. The name has been passed through generations, like an heirloom. Before me, there was Pike. Before him, it was another fellow. They all got rich, and they all retired._

 _But I stand before you as the man I always was. James Tiberius Kirk, captain of_ Enterprise. __

 _Some of you might not be okay with this. You might be angry or upset at the lie. I understand. You'll be released from your contracts and dropped off at the next planet._

 _For those of you who want to stay, I'll be glad to keep you. You should know, Pike and I knowingly walked into the Giant Slayer's net. We were planning to bring down Archer and Komack and Barnett from within. And we did. We created a new universe, a universe without their influence. Pike and I, and Number One. Together._

 _One thing I must stress: Number One is here, on this ship, under my protection. Any crewmember that lays a finger on her will be dropped off before we get to the next planet. Without a shuttle._

 _You may not see me around for a few days. The price of this new universe was three days of torture. Pike and I need to recover. We'll be back to normal soon, and I'll be your captain for as long as you'll have me, though he'll be leaving to take his own retirement soon._

 _If you have any concerns, please feel free to comm me, or talk to Acting Captain Spock._

 _Until we meet again, my merry band of brigands._

 _Kirk out._

Yeah, he had this captaining thing down.

\---

The comm was simple.

 _The best part of that was that everyone thought I was wearing pants._

 _When you're done in sickbay, come to my quarters._

 _Yours for always, JTK_

Christine was still reading it when Leonard came out of his office.

"We're done," he said, shrugging his lab coat off and hanging it by the door.

"Yeah," Christine agreed, following him out, "We are."

Jim's quarters were maddeningly far from sickbay, and Christine felt like it took close to a decade for her and Leonard to get there. She was vibrating in anticipation, her toes twitching and heart racing. She gripped Leonard's hand in the turbolift, searching for some form of comfort, but finding that, for the first time since she'd known him, he had none to offer.

She was three digits into the code for the door when Jim called it open, and it was all Christine could do to not sprint to his side. Instead, she joined Leonard where he stood uncertainly, just inside the threshold.

"Hi," Jim said, looking up at them from his desk chair, some kind of captain-y document on the screen behind him.

"Hi," Leonard mumbled back. "How are you doing?"

"I'm sorry."

Christine blinked. "You're sorry?"

"Yeah," Jim gave a boyish grin that somehow excited her and broke her heart at the same time. "I was a shit earlier. You were trying to help, I was trying to have a breakdown. Didn't work out too well."

Leonard raised one of his acrobatic eyebrows. "Kid, what are you-"

"No," Jim held up a hand. "A few things." He waited for both of them to nod, and Christine smiled at what she could only think of as unnecessary courtesy, but she loved him for it. "I'm pretty fucked up, over the shit they did, and I'm not totally ready to talk about it. But when I am, you'll be the first to know. I'm gonna be sensitive to touch for a bit. So let me know when you're putting your hands on me - which I hope will happen really often and really soon - and please no grabbing the back of my neck and if you can avoid my stomach, you should. Also I don't want to watch holos for a while. Okay?"

Leonard nodded, and Christine bit back a sob at how broken her Golden Boy was. "Yeah," she mumbled.

"You guys got anything you need to say?"

Leonard crossed the room in two steps and hauled Jim up into his arms. Jim laughed and returned the embrace, resting his head on the shorter man's shoulder. "I love you, too, Bones."

The men held each other for a moment before Leonard drew in his breath in an irritated huff and pushed Jim away, gently. The air felt a little heavy in the room; Christine realized she was holding her breath, waiting for whatever Leonard was going to say.

"About your dad--"

"Yeah?"

"Look, trouble. Jim. Look. My dad- my dad's dead, too, and it's my fault, okay? I know--" Leonard choked a little and dragged the back of his hand across his eyes. "I know what it's like, okay?"

He stood awkwardly in the center of the room, only a foot or so from Jim, but a thousand light years away.

"It's- well. He was sick. Dying. In - in fucking agony. Painkillers were next to useless." Leonard's voice cracked, and Jim took a step toward him, but nothing more. The silence in the room was downright oppressive.

"Leonard-" She started but he shook his head.

"He begged me. T-to kill him. His kidneys were shot and 300mg of morphine later. Well."

"What did he have?" Christine barely registered the question as she asked it.

"Darnay's."

"But they-"

Leonard practically growled. "If you fucking say they cured it, Christine, I swear-"

Jim was looking at Leonard with his head cocked, as though trying to get a new angle. "That's why you left Earth. You said- you said you and Jocelyn broke up because you fucked up big. Is this the fuckup?"

"This shouldn't be about me, Jim, it should-"

"Is this the fuckup?"

"Yes."

Jim nodded and kissed Leonard's lips softly.

Christine crossed to them, unhurried but urgent, took the hands her boys offered, and lay a kiss on each of their palms.

"It's not what you did," she murmured, thinking of her own father, probably sitting out on the porch, smoking his pipe and wondering about her. "It's what you're gonna do."

Jim smiled at her, his eyes clear and, she was pretty sure, shining. But then again, she was in love with the damn fool, so he always looked good.

"Christine is right, Bones. I uh- we've all fucked up. And I want you, just the way you are, okay?" He laughed, and Leonard scowled as Jim drew him close again, laying a kiss on his jaw line as Christine moved behind Leonard to wrap her own arms around him.

They stood, comforting and _whole_ for the first time in what felt like ages.

"We're not having sex," Leonard murmured against Jim's hair after a few moments. "The little adventurer here isn't up to it."

"Like hell I'm not."

Christine and Leonard both laughed, and a moment later, Jim joined them. It was easy, it was comforting. Christine loved Leonard, and she had enjoyed the undivided attention he'd showered her with while Jim was gone - in part to distract them both from the fact that Jim _was_ gone - but it hadn't been right. She needed both her boys, and having them back, their warmth and weight and love, was nearly perfect.

"If you want," she grinned, squeezing Jim's hand, "Leonard and I can show you what we got up to when you were gone. And you can offer... suggestions?"

Leonard shot her a barbed look, but it was the'grumpy doctor' facade he wore like armor, and she knew him far too well to think he didn't love the idea just a little.

Jim looked at Leonard, the lust naked in his eyes. "What do you say, Bones?"

"I think you're goddamned _handfuls_ , the both of you," Leonard growled, but he gently peeled Jim's arms from around his neck, pushing him back into the chair, and turned to Christine.

"On the bed, little bit," He grinned, and she hopped to comply, but not before bending to press a kiss to Jim's lips.

"Good to have you back," she whispered, and Jim practically beamed at her.

"Good to be back. But I think Bones told you to get on the bed, lovely."

And who was Christine Chapel to keep her boys waiting?

\---

Seven days after they returned to _Enterprise_ Pike and Jim had their last meeting as coworkers.

Jim was still working on normalcy- he'd spent a shift on the bridge the day before, getting his sea legs back, as it were. Pike had been mostly absent from official duties, but he'd been around, saying his goodbyes to the crew. He and Jim had always operated as though they were a family. There was enough distrust in the universe that, if they didn't cultivate something different where they lived, the whole thing would burn. Not to mention that the ship had been Chris's home for nigh on twenty years. Goodbye to all that was hard. Goodbye to Jim was nearly impossible.

Nonetheless, Pike smiled through the whole ordeal, spent their final meeting making jokes and telling amusing little stories that made Jim's stomach churn. But they kept smiles plastered to their faces, and pretended as hard as they could that everything was going to be okay, that everything was whatever passed for normal. And maybe Chris's laugh was hollow, maybe Jim's smile didn't reach his eyes, but neither one really thought the other gave a good goddamn.

Except Chris apparently did, and 20 minutes into their little charade, he called Jim on their pretense.

"Son, you gonna act like this is all up to code, or are we going to talk about it?"

"What are you talking about?"

Pike rolled his eyes. "Really, Jim? I'm talking about what happened at the holding, I'm talking about your mother and McCoy and Chapel and Sam, and I'm talking about you avoiding me like a little brat."

Jim raised an eyebrow, which Pike thought he must have learned from McCoy at some point. Or maybe Spock.

"I went where you told me, I endured what they did, I killed the people you wanted dead and I don't have problems with Christine or Bones or Winona. Sam, sure, but that ain't nothing anyone can do anything about. And if I'm avoiding you, it's because you're always with _her_."

"I don't even know how to respond to that," Pike sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "For someone who told the crew you'd kill anyone who laid a finger on One, you've become sour on her."

"Not become, Pike. Never liked her, never will. But she's carrying your child. Bones did a paternity test, by the by, and-"

Pike knew Jim had a lot more to say, and it was sure to continue in the same charming vein. "Enough," he growled. "You want to be pissed at me, be pissed at me. But she is not fair game. She has bent over backwards for you, and your contempt is inappropriate and do you have any fucking idea how out of line doing an unsolicited paternity test is? How did you even get McCoy to agree? No, you know what? Don't tell me. You need to get a grip, son."

"Get a grip?"

"Yeah, get a grip."

Jim's hands balled at his side, and Chris gripped his cane more tightly. If this came to violence, there was no telling who would win; Chris was not looking forward to having to find out, but what would a last day be without a little excitement?

"Do you-" Jim looked like he might actually cry. "Don't you- They-" With a shout that was more animal than human, he turned and slammed his fist into a wall. Chris was relatively sure Jim broke at least one bone in the attack, if not more. He was clutching his hand now, cradling it against his chest, and Chris managed to keep his instinct to get up and take care of the boy under control.

"Feel better?"

"Go to hell."

"Jim, come on."

"No, fuck you!"

The silence was long and, though Chris was fine letting it sit as long as it needed, Jim was shifting on the balls of his feet, energy rolling of him like a fractured warp core.

"Why did you let them have me?"

Chris didn't want to dignify that with an answer, but while he could let Jim key himself up indefinitely, if he wanted to, that really didn't seem fair to the kid.

"You agreed to it."

"I didn't know what I was getting into."

"I tried, kid."

"Don't fucking call me that. Don't call me kid like I'm some kind of infant. I went for you, and for Emily and do you know what they _did_ to me? And what I did to them?"

Pike smiled sadly. "Yeah, I know. I'm sorry, Jim. I really am. I never thought-"

"No, I don't suppose you did," Jim turned and advanced on Pike, and Chris found himself looking into clear blue eyes that were far too old for the face they were in.

"Listen to me, son. I'm sorry. I really am. But what you did-"

"Why did you look for me?"

"What?"

"You picked me up off a bar floor. You could have left me there to be scooped up by slavers, made someone's pretty bed toy. But you risked your ass for me and I don't know why."

"I need a reason why?" Chris took a deep breath as Jim just stared at him, waiting. This had been a long time coming, then, longer than he'd known. "Because, Jim. Because I knew who you were, and I knew that no one else was gonna help you up."

"Because you promised my mom."

"No. I- I don't know what to tell you, really. I loved you when you were little. I didn't stop just because I went away and you grew up. You were my best friend's son. And now- now you're more than that. Now you're _my_ son and I don't know what else you want to hear."

Something in Jim softened just a tiny bit, and he seemed, for the moment, to be thinking.

"I was out of control, when I killed them."

"Yeah."

"I let you down-"

Chris grabbed the young man by his shoulders and gave him enough of a shake that Jim made a small noise. "No. Never. Jim. You have never let me down. You hear?"

Jim gave a weak nod, and Pike released him. "You weren't perfect. You think I always am? So you live and you learn and next time, you do better."

Jim hung his head, and Chris pulled him into a tight hug.

"I'm proud of you, son. I always have been, I always will be. You're a great man, and you can only get better. You hear?"

Jim sniffed, and Chris thought, very privately, that for such a badass pirate-son-of-a-pirate, Jim spent a lot of time blubbering about his sad-ass life. "I hear," the kid mumbled into Chris chest, and strong arms came up to return the embrace.

"I might be going away, but I'm not leaving. You know how to find me. And if you need me, I'll always be there."

Jim didn't respond, but, Chris thought, he really didn't need to. He held onto the man who was more family to him than anyone had been before, until Jim began to squirm.

"Dad?" Jim asked, pushing himself out of the embrace.

"Yeah?"

"My uh- I didn't really do a paternity test."

Chris nodded. He wasn't sure if he believed it; Jim tended to jump first and think fourteenth, but if that was what Jim needed him to think, well, he could do that.

"How's your hand?"

Jim laughed, and Chris felt what he could only call _relief_ at the genuineness of the noise. "Broken, at least," he said, testing his digits and flinching. "Bones is gonna be mad."

Chris nodded. "McCoy is always mad."

"Not with me."

"Well, go see him. Get healthy. And we're having dinner tonight, just you and me. Captain's mess, 1930."

Jim smiled, and Chris gave him another brief hug.

There was a lot to do to get ready for the departure, but there was time. Tonight was about Chris saying goodbye to his best friend. And this time, he would at least get to see him again.

\---

Jim showed up for his dinner with Pike with a healed hand and a wrapped gift. Well, "wrapped"- it seemed that there was more adhesive tape than paper on the package, and Chris finally resorted to a kitchen knife to free the silver frame from its confines.

He stared at the picture for a long minute. Finally Jim cleared his throat.

"Thank-" Chris started, but Jim cut across him.

"Just remember. Cute things get big and funny looking."

"Jim, I-"

"What's for dinner?" Jim asked, settling into a chair.

"I got something for you, too."

The young man looked up at him, his brow furrowed. "You did?"

"Yeah." Chris dug into his pocket, pulling out a small box and holding it out to Jim.

"Are you asking me to marry you? Cause--"

"Shut up and open the fucking box, Jim."

Jim shut up and he opened the fucking box. Inside, nestled between cream colored satin, was a golden band. Jim plucked it carefully from the box, and held it to the light, trying to read the inscription on the inside.

"What language is that?"

Pike smiled. "Old Earth language. Hebrew. It says _I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine_."

Jim swallowed hard. "Was this--"

"Your father's."

There was a long silence as Jim turned the golden band between his fingers, studying the strange symbols.

Pike cleared his throat. "He gave it to me the day-- the day you were born. Took it off while we were loading the explosives and told me Winona was gonna want it, but she wasn't gonna take it. So he told me to give it to her when she was ready," he paused and took a shuddering breath. "Every year, for the last twenty-seven years, I've been trying to give it to her. She won't take it. So uh--"

"Why me?"

"Because it's your legacy- when you have to, you do what you gotta do, for the people you love. Yeah?"

Jim sniffed and slipped the ring onto his right ring finger. "You old sap."

Chris tucked the picture frame Jim had given him into a pocket, gave Jim's shoulder an affectionate squeeze, and smiled. "Love you, too, son."

Fucking hell, he was going to miss the kid.

\---

Emily Kestra was born on a rainy Thursday in July, 6 weeks after Kit and Neena Pierce got to their new home on Arvada III, and Jim didn't cry about that either, though he might have mocked Chris - Kit now, _Keith_ \- a little for the mistiness in his eyes as he held his new daughter up to the viewscreen to meet her big brother.

"I'm gonna take such good care of your kid, Dad," he muttered, and Chris laughed.

"You're never gonna need to, Jim."

"Yeah, well. She's family."

 _Neither_ of them burst into weepy grins at that declaration, and if Chris managed not to fully murder Jim a week later when the leather baby clothes and the tiny, custom-made motorcycle helmet arrived, well. Jim would take his wins where he could get them.

\---

 _"I know how to find Kirk."_

 _"What?"_

 _"The data. The_ Enterprise _sightings for the past three years."_

 _"What about it?"_

 _"Look."_

 _"What am I seeing?"_

 _"Every year, the beginning of January, end of December."_

 _"I see."_

 _"We can get him, here."_

 _"How do you know-"_

 _"The only constant between the years is Kirk."_

 _"I see."_

 _"Do I have clearance? Sir?"_

 _"Nate--"_

 _"Matt!"_

 _"Fine. Submit a formal request."_

 _"Thank you, sir."_

 _"You're welcome. And dismissed."_

 _"Before I go, Matt. I need a favor."_

\---

Jim knew that, on a cosmic scale, the scale on which people measure _important_ things like happiness and freedom and love, he was one of the luckiest people alive. He had a family in his crew, a parent in Pike, partners in Christine and Bones - love in all the form it presents itself. He had the freedom of his own command, the infinite universe to explore in every direction he could imagine.

And yet.

"I'm not happy."

It was the first time Jim had ever said it aloud.

"I'm not _happy_."

He rolled the words a second time, waiting for them to mean something else, something more.

"Well, do something about it."

Jim jumped a little. He had known Pike was on the screen, but the world he was in - the one Bones called "Poor Jimmy" with that tone that just oozed the kind of pity that made Jim want to hurl - tended to take him away from the now and the who and let him luxuriate in the sadness.

"Right. You got the secret formula for happiness in your back pocket then?"

"Don't get fresh with me, boy, I'll come up there and take your spaceship away."

Jim laughed despite himself. "Yeah, yeah. It's... I don't know. I get all morose this time of year."

Pike nodded. "Son, you get morose because you like getting morose. Your birthday is just an annoying eventuality."

Jim made a face. "I suppose. I'm gonna be 29."

"Old man, you."

"What should I do? About the happiness thing?"

Pike stared for a long moment before answering. "You either find what you're missing, or you learn to love what you have."

"And if I never find it?"

"Then you're not really looking."

\---

Jim was finishing shoving pants and shirts and a spare phaser into his bag when Christine showed up.

"Jim?"

"Hey, Christine." He smiled and kissed her chastely. "Hey."

She smiled up at him and his heart stuttered a little. It still shocked him every time, the amount of love, of affection, that he felt for this beautiful girl.

"You wanted to see me?"

"Yeah." He kissed her again, because he could, and because the two years they'd been together hadn't done a goddamn thing to dull his lust for her, or for Bones. It was still best when they were together, but their Doctor demanded that he not be disturbed when he was in the lab, and dammit if he wasn't in the fucking lab now.

Not that they didn't all have their hideaways. They'd given up their pretenses and began cohabiting a year after Jim's Big Adventure with the Fleet, but Bones had his lab and Jim had his kitchen and Christine had the gym. The ship was small; they needed their own space.

"I'm leaving in an hour," Jim said, sitting on the bed and pulling Christine down next to him.

"You have to go?"

"It's just a week," he murmured, leaning over to take her hand. "I need to go."

Christine shook her head. "You're confusing need to and want to, Jim."

Jim sighed heavily. "I can't--"

"I know."

"I can't _not_ go."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean-" he took a deep breath. "I mean, what is this ship like on my- for that week?"

Christine smiled. "It's like any other week."

"Except?"

"The sleeves."

It was a cultural tradition amongst the members of the Independent Trader's Guild- to commemorate the day when George Kirk martyred himself to save his family and crew from the Fleet, Guild members had started wearing golden armbands that, over the last 30 years, had morphed from a simple strip of fabric to complete, elaborate sleeves, often embroidered gaudily and, in Jim's opinions, inappropriately. And what had been a day of reverence had ballooned into a week, making it unbearable for anyone called "Kirk" to be in public for those seven days. Only a few people knew why they were yellow - Pike had told Jim how Winona had unwittingly started the tradition once, but only because Jim had asked.

The morning before George had died, he had given her a blanket for the baby, for Jim. A bright, vibrant yellow blanket. Winona could never bring herself to swaddle her son in it, opting instead to rip it into strips and wear it, torn and tattered, wrapped around her arm so tightly it cut off circulation. A little piece of her that couldn't feel, that couldn't hurt, that couldn't miss George.

It made Jim sick to think of his mother's grief whitewashed into tradition, into pageantry.

So every year since Pike had told him, the eight days surrounding Jim's birthday were spent in a shuttle, heading out to the coordinates where his father's remains were. The Fleet had never publicized the site, and Winona and Pike kept it between them, so he was free of tourists and gawkers. He liked the solitude, the emptiness. And he liked not having everyone ask where his sleeves were.

They all thought his father's death was heroic. They celebrated the symbol of a man, a single man, fighting against the Fleet.

Jim mourned his father.

"I can't handle the sleeves, Christine."

"I know." She rested her head against his shoulder and he tugged her close, tucking her body against his side. "Let us come with you?"

Jim smiled sadly. "And leave my ship without a doctor _and_ a nurse? Can't."

"You could take just me. Or just Leonard."

Jim shook his head again. "Can't, not fair to the other one."

"Sure it is. You and me, we can reenact the Garden of Eden. You be Adam, I'll find an apple."

She was grinning now, her fingertips tracing up along his thighs, and Jim swallowed hard against the urge to say anything at all because she was _cheating_ , goddammit.

Somewhere in the general vicinity of the door, there was an bemused snort.

"Like you two could get two meters without me." Christine yanked her hand away from Jim's groin and they jumped apart, like two teenagers interrupted by a parent. But when they looked up with matching pitiful expressions, Leonard's eyes were sparkling despite his scowl. "You," he pointed at Jim, "Trouble, would be too busy burying your face between her legs, and you, Handful, would demand as much as he could give and more." Leonard laughed fondly as he kicked off his boots and walked to the bed, leaning in to kiss each of them in turn. "No, you need someone to remind you to put your clothes back on and get on with the living parts."

Jim was grinning. "I'm leaving in 45 minutes, Bones. You're cutting it close here."

McCoy nodded. "I know.'Cause I ain't doing anything with you until you get back."

Jim pouted. He pouted _hard_ , unleashing the full power of his doe-eyes on his lover.

"Stop it. Bambi eyes don't get you sex."

Jim nodded and grabbed up his things. "Always worth a try, though. I gotta prep the shuttle," he said, standing and stretching, and Christine resisted the urge to swipe a finger along the line of flesh exposed as his shirt rode up his stomach. "You to coming to see me off, then?"

Leonard nodded, and stretched up a little to plant a kiss on Jim's forehead.

"You know we always do, Golden Boy," Christine offered, stepping between the two of them to wrap her arms around Jim's lanky torso.

He smiled and disengaged himself from her embrace after giving her a brief squeeze.

"Great. See you in 30?"

They both nodded, and Jim swung his bag over his shoulder, headed to the shuttle bay with a skip in his step.

He was _loved_.

\---

Commander Nathaniel Komack-Archer, second-in-command of the Fleet's Piracy Taskforce, currently assigned to the USS _Qureshi_ , watched with triumph as the Independent Trader ship _Enterprise_ crept into the Hromi Cluster 25 minutes ahead of schedule.

"Mister Riley, hold our position."

Decker had put this on his shoulders, the responsibility of bringing in James Kirk. Nate knew he was slippery - he'd been chasing _Enterprise_ for a year and a half, since James had killed his fathers.

And now, he was going to talk to the little murderer.

[part 1]()|[part 3](http://community.livejournal.com/velocicopter/2529.html)


	4. FIC: If We Lived And Were Good (Part 3/4)

_**FIC: If We Lived And Were Good (Part 3/4)**_  
The Fleet ship had come out of nowhere.

Leonard liked to believe didn't spend a lot of time on the bridge, bothering Jim while he worked, but somehow, with Jim gone for a little more than a day and people already wearing their goddamn sleeves, Leonard's wandering feet had taken him there when he wasn't paying attention. And he stood in the doorway, feeling like a damn fool, as the ship faded into sight and Uhura froze.

"Captain Spock? We're-um. We're being hailed. By the USS _Qureshi_."

The bridge seemed to hold its breath as they waited for him to make a call. Roll over and take it, fire and run, or whatever the most fucking _logical_ thing was.

Spock stood, staring into the viewscreen, but Leonard saw the tell-tale twitch of his fingers as he clasped his hands behind his back.

Oh, that was great. The fucking impassive demon was nervous.

"Oh screen, please, Ms. Uhura."

The face that flicked onto the viewscreen a moment later was familiar somehow, and Leonard grasped for something to identify. The eyes, maybe, or the curve of the lips, or the sweep of the brow. He wasn't totally sure.

The man's face broke into a jackal's grin, and Spock took a step forward.

"I am Captain Spock of the Independent Trader ship _Enterprise_. How may we assist you today?"

\---

Nate's blood ran cold. Before he was adopted into his fathers' family, he had seen more than enough of those goddamn golden sleeves. It wasn't enough that these pirates had to disregard the deaths of the 53 soldiers that George Kirk had murdered, they had to mock a widow's grief.

And the Vulcan was fucking _lying_ to him.

Well, two could play that game.

"Hello, Spock. I'm Commander Nathaniel Komack of the USS _Qureshi_. I'd like to speak with your captain."

Nate had studied the bios of the known associates of James Kirk. He knew all abut this Spock character. He knew about his exile from Vulcan, along with his father and mother, for the crime of muddying the gene pool. Vulcans liked Humans well enough, but they frowned on interbreeding, and Sarek and Lady Amanda had been exiled for it. They were high in the Traders Guild now, and their son was infamous in his own right.

"I am the captain of this vessel," Spock said, quirking an eyebrow.

Nate grinned. Not because he was amused, but because this attempt at deception was just _cute_.

"No, the captain of _Enterprise_ is James Kirk, and he's under arrest for crimes against the Fleet. You will surrender him immediately."

"I'm afraid that won't be possible, Commander Komack-"

"You will surrender him, Mr. Spock, or I will take your entire crew under arrest and turn your pretty ship there into component atoms."

There was a long silence, on both Nate's bridge and on _Enterprise_ , while the threat hung heavy in the air. Finally a man standing behind Spock piped up. Nate recognized him: the doctor. Kirk's lover.

"He ain't here."

Nate glared at the man- the only one, it seemed, not wearing the goddamn George Kirk tribute.

"And you are?"

"Not who you're looking for."

"And where is the person I'm looking for?"

Silence. Neither the Vulcan or his mouthy little friend were blinking, staring daggers into Nate, like kittens who thought they were lions. Fine. If they wanted to play hardball, Nate could play just as well as they could.

"Very well," he smiled, amazed at the oiliness of his own voice. "I assume that you have a _way_ of contacting your delinquent employer?"

Spock nodded his head slightly. The angry man pursed his lips.

"Then," Nate never took his eyes from the loudmouth. "Why doesn't Mr. Not who I'm looking for come over to my ship, and you can let your captain know where to come and collect him?"

A ripple passed along the _Enterprise_ bridge, and Nate did his very best not to look triumphant. The loudmouth and the half-breed exchanged a long look.

"Doctor McCoy-" Spock began, but Nate cut across him.

"Oh, is that who you are?" he allowed smoothing oily into his voice, something reeking of dark promises. "Dr. Leonard Horatio McCoy, wanted for questioning in conjunction with the death of Dr. David Leonard McCoy and the derelict child-support payments of Joanna Eleanor Darnell-McCoy?"

McCoy's lip curled and Nate felt a jolt of triumph.

"I was already questioned for the death of my father, thank you, and I pay Joce-"

"And, I think, you've been romantically linked to our missing friend. Yeah, McCoy, you're coming over here so we can chat. And Mr. Spock, Lt. Palmer will send you a data packet for your captain as soon as we have Dr. McCoy."

"I'm not gonna be some damsel-"

Nate rolled his eyes, an action he hoped was magnified by that giant viewscreen he was displayed on. "Do you really want to make me more angry than I am? You're outclassed, out-gunned, and you have five minutes, Dr. McCoy, before I start shooting. Komack out."

He severed the connection with cold satisfaction. Either Kirk would come for his trick and Nate would get his answers, or Kirk would prove what a spineless liar he was, and the Fleet would have a brand new doctor to press into service. Either way, it was going to work out.

Well, it was going to work out for Nate. Kirk wouldn't be so lucky.

\---

Jim usually wasn't one for meditating, but he found the week around his father's death was a good time for it. He got the silence of his own shuttle, the solitude of his mind, and the complete and utter boredom of a man used to managing 200 people on a goddamn starship who was now doing fuck-all in the empty cold of space.

When the hail came, his first thought was to ignore it, and go back to meditating on the best way to defeat the warbirds on level seven of _Kobayashi Maru_. But, ever the dutiful captain, he paused his game, stretched and padded his way to the front of the shuttle. Only Spock, Bones, and Christine had his comm information in the shuttle, so unless it was a particularly naughty vid, it was sure to be actual pressing business.

He keyed in the access code to the encrypted message, and the smile was quickly wiped from his face as Spock's sunny countenance appeared on the screen.

Spock actually looked worried, and that was more frightening to Jim than anything he'd experienced to date. He pressed play like it would bring the oxygen back into his lungs.

"Captain, I am sorry to interrupt your reverie. At 1634 today, we were set upon by the USS _Qureshi_ , under the command of a Nathaniel Komack." Jim actually felt cold at those words. His ship. His crew. And he had _abandoned_ them to play to his fucking daddy issues. But Spock had more to say. "Commander Komack sent the enclosed data packet to be sent on to you. He said it would decrypt with your father's song, but attempts to use'The Ballad of George the Dragon Slayer' have proved... ineffectual."

Jim reached out to paused the playback, but something about Spock's concerned look stopped him. "And captain, though the crew was uninjured, Commander Komack demanded a particular hostage."

No.

"He asked for Doctor McCoy-"

NO.

"-on the _Qureshi_ -"

 _ **NO**_.

"-that the data packet would give you the coordinates to collect him-"

Spock kept talking, but Jim wasn't hearing anything more. Bones. _Bones_ had been kidnapped. By the fucking fleet. By the - fuck - by someone who was probably the son or brother or cousin of someone Jim had _murdered_.

And panic, though it felt fucking fantastic, was getting him nowhere.

Jim took a deep breath to remind himself he could, and restarted Spock's message, pulling up the encrypted packet on his PADD. There was work to do.

\---

Leonard McCoy knew a few fundamental truths about himself with absolute confidence. First and foremost, he was a doctor. A damn good doctor. And his talents were being _wasted_ while he was sitting in a fucking brig on a Fleet ship.

Not that anyone was exactly asking him, but still. Wasted.

The most annoying thing about it, besides the boredom and the uncertainty, was how fucking smug Commander Komack was. No, not Commander. The little twit didn't deserve the title. _Komack_ , McCoy thought. _Just Komack._

He was staring McCoy down on the other side of the forcefield, and Leonard was really getting fucking sick of it.

"The fuck do you want?"

"Just to chat, Lenny."

McCoy bristled. He hated that this kid could crawl under his skin, but there he was, making Leonard want to deck him.

"You can call me Doctor McCoy."

"I can call you whatever I want, sweetcheeks. You're my prisoner."

McCoy snorted, but didn't think such a brilliant statement really deserved a response.

"Gonna play the quiet game? Okay, I can work with that." Komack leaned against the wall. "You know, I'd love to let you out of there."

"I'd love to wring your neck."

 _Dammit_.

"I'm sure. So, tell me about your captain."

"Oh, you know. 29 years old, loves long walks on the beach and chocolate ice cream."

For a moment, Leonard was glad of the forcefield between them, because he was already a fucking hostage, and the pure rage that gleamed in Komack's eyes promised retribution for any more smart responses. Leonard knew what someone else with the name Komack had done to Jim, and he didn't relish sharing the experience.

"You're funny, Lenny."

"I'm not a comedian. I'm a doctor."

"And a damn good one, they say. Literally wrote the book on anatomical and forensic pathology."

"Tell me more nice things about myself."

Komack smiled, a move that made Leonard think of predators, of teeth and monsters under the bed. "Why don't you tell me about James Kirk instead?"

"If you know we're partners, you're not the ignorant rube you're playing. Stop bullshitting me."

The smirk across his captors face brought something to the front of Leonard's mind. He'd seen that look before, somewhere.

"And by the by, where the fuck have I seen you before?"

Komack shook his head. "You've been here, like, five minutes, Lenny. You think I'm giving away all my secrets like your drunken prom date?"

Leonard felt the rage welling up in him, but there was nothing in the fucking cell to throw at the arrogant bastard. And even if he could, there was a goddamn forcefield in the way. But Leonard had words. He always had those. "You're what, the cousin of that slimy bastard Jim killed two _years_ ago, looking for revenge? Hoping that by kidnapping his partner, you'll show him how bad he hurt you? Pathetic."

Komack started towards the forcefield, and for a brief moment, Leonard thought he would lower it, allowing for at least an attempt at escape, but he stopped short.

"You don't know a single fucking thing about James Komack, Leonard, and you would do best to not pretend you do."

Leonard thought that provoking the man to lose his cool was just as good a plan as any he'd come up with so far, so he opened his mouth to say more.

"No," Komack cut across him, sneering the whole time, "No, you don't get to disparage my family," he snapped, and, turning on his heel he began to march toward the door, calling the lights out as he went.

"Enjoy the dark, Lenny," he taunted, silhouetted in the doorway. "I'll be back in a little while. Work to do and all. Maybe you'll learn to play nice."

The door slid shut behind him, and McCoy sat down, hard, on the floor. This was not going well. This was not going well at all.

\---

Jim turned the viewscreen off, Christine's image lingering like afterglow on his eyelids. He'd commed the ship as soon as he'd read the message, gotten an update from Spock.

And then he talked to Christine.

She was quiet. Quieter than usual. He could see the fear and worry in her eyes, but he was too far away to read out and soothe her, too many lightyears between them to kiss the wrinkles at the corner of her eye and tell her it would be okay.

She wanted to help. That wasn't surprising. If there was one constant about Christine, it was the ferocity with which she approached both him and Bones, the sheer protective love she gave without asking for anything in return.

And that's what made Jim want to give her everything. And that's what broke his heart. Because he couldn't.

 _I'm not going to ask you to let me help, Jim, because I know what's at stake. And so do you._

Christine's words echoed in Jim's head, reverberating down to the pit of his stomach. He needed to get Bones back, and he needed it soon. He knew that; he needed it for her, and he needed it for himself.

But what the fuck did the clue mean? It was some "I open at the close" bullshit, "Your father's song." There were any number of celebratory ballads about George Kirk, and it would take years to run them through all an encryption protocol, and Jim didn't have time. He didn't have any time.

 _Breathe_.

Uhura and Chekov were working on the encryption. Scotty was trying to trace the _Qureshi_ 's warp signature. Jim had one thing left to do.

\---

"Jim?" The image was dark, and sleep clouded Pike's voice.

"Hi, Dad. Sorry, is it night there?"

"Yeah, is this- what's wrong?"

"Huh- oh. Nothing. Go back to bed."

Pike rolled his eyes. "No, I'm up anyway. Emily refused her second nap, fell asleep early and needed singing to."

Jim smiled a little. "You sing?"

"Not to you."

"But I can't sleep-"

"What do you want, Jim, or I'm hanging up."

Jim took a deep breath. "Um. I fucked up."

"How?"

"I went- I mean. I was away. From the ship."

Pike hummed thoughtfully. "Right, it's that time, with the sleeves. I see some of it here. Hurts like hell."

Jim nodded. "So I did what I do. I took a shuttle and, you know, headed out. And. Fuck." Jim swallowed hard. On the list of things he definitely didn't want to do,'admit my major failings in life to Pike' was near the top.

"Jim, spit it out."

"I was fourteen sectors away and Komack and Archer's son kidnapped Bones and sent some kind of- I don't know, encrypted birthday card. And they said that it decrypts with my father's song, but it's not any of the ballads we've tried and--" Jim paused for breath and saw the look on Pike's face. "And you know what it is?"

Pike smiled, an old melody drifting across his mind, in a perpetually out-of-tune baritone.

"Your dad used to sing Sam to sleep. And he sang to you, when Winona was pregnant. Try'Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys', okay?"

Jim raised an eyebrow, but tapped the phrase into his PADD. Immediately, data began issuing forth. He looked up into Pike's expectant face. "It worked."

"Good. Be careful."

"Wait-- Who. Who would know that he used to sing that song?"

Pike signed heavily and ran a hand through his hair. "It's a short list, not a lot of close friends of his are still out there. Um. Me, of course. Winona. Sam, wherever he is, if he remembers. And... he didn't start that song with you boys. He loved it a long time."

"So you're saying--"

"Komack the elder. And deader. It might just be- I don't know. Hereditary revenge?"

Jim let out a shaky breath. "Do you remember what you told me, before the Fleet caper?"

Pike furrowed his brow. "Stop complaining, you signed up for this?"

"No. You said to me, you said.'No one will ever confuse you with George Kirk ever again.' And yet--"

"Jim--"

A noise made Pike turn back to his darkened house. Jim heard it, too, and he smiled. "Emily is calling you."

Pike smiled sadly. "You know I love you?"

"I know."

"You can do this. And if you need me, you know how to find me."

"Come with me?"

Pike laughed. "How many last adventures you want me to have?"

"At least one?"

"Can't." Pike smiled, gesturing to the dark house around him.

Jim understood, on a mental level, that Pike had traded the rag-tag ship family for something that was his blood, something held together by more than Guild contracts and the vacuum of space. But in a purely emotional, visceral way, Jim felt the tearing that he had felt the day he had turned his back on Winona, the day Sam ran away, the day Pike had told him about One. He felt it all falling from under him in the most dizzying way. Jim had never been shy about jumping when there was a need, never worried about how he would land. Either he'd win or he'd lose, either way he had a knack for finding his way to the top when he was done. But this was like someone spinning him around in a Martian dust pool. There was no real chance of finding the top- he could only swim and hope.

"Dad, please--"

The same winsome smile played across Pike's lips. "I would, if you needed me. But you don't, you haven't needed me for a long time."

Jim scrubbed his hand across his eyes, feeling like the last few hours had spread out into years of sleepless nights. "What do I do when I see him?"

"If it were me?" Pike had a glint in his eye that disappeared when Emily again called for her daddy. "I would find out what he wanted."

Jim nodded. "Go get that sister of mine."

"I will. Love you, son."

"Love you, too."

Pike raised an eyebrow at the omission Jim's usual "dad," but nodded, smiling, and cut the feed on his end.

Jim stared for what felt like a long time at the blank screen where Pike had been.

 _you haven't needed me for a long time_

Maybe it was true. Maybe Jim didn't need Pike. And maybe Christine was right, maybe Jim never got a handle on the difference between need and want.

And maybe they were both completely wrong.

\---

Christine smiled sadly as Nyota placed a steaming mug in front of her.

"What is it?"

Nyota gave her a look, the kind that only Nyota gave - equal parts pity, humor, and annoyance. "It's apple cider. With cinnamon."

Christine took a sip and promptly choked on her tongue.

"Oh," Nyota grinned. "And some of that Saurian brandy you gave me for my birthday."

Christine laughed weakly. "You could warn a girl."

"Yeah, I could. But my way is more fun."

They sipped in silence for a moment. Christine loved Nyota; on a ship full of men, it had been refreshing to find a woman that she not only got along with, but she genuinely _liked_. It wasn't that she didn't like the men; she just found it comforting to have another female presence. Plus, Nyota was a hell of a sparring partner.

"How is your decryption coming?"

Christine didn't really want to ask the question, but she was burning for some news- any news -about either of her boys. She had never thought of herself as the type to get attached, but some time in the last two years, she had fallen into something comfortable with the both of them. It had been difficult when Jim had gone on his mission, it was hard when he went away on his birthday, but she had Leonard those times, to anchor her.

"It's slow work. Chekov is on it for now, I needed to rest my eyes. There are actually 3,406 songs written about George Kirk, and it could be any one of them or the lyrics within. Or another song entirely, or not a song at all. We're doing our best."

Christine nodded. She hadn't really expected Nyota to magically turn around and magic up an answer; it had only been a few hours. And as much as she wanted to tell her to get the hell back to work, she needed her friend.

"How are you holding up?"

"Me? I'm worried about Leonard."

It went unspoken, the current of _They might die_. Christine usually let to go unspoken, because it was a constant in her life - if Jim wasn't hanging off of things by his fingertips or taunting people and aliens six times his size, then he was eating something that would make his insides curl up and turn backwards. Jim always might not come back. And he took Leonard with him enough, Christine had gotten used to the idea of them coming back in pieces, or not at all.

Hell, she had put both of them back together more than once. It wasn't easy, but the idea that they could both die out there and she might never know- that was worse. At least with a mission or a handoff, she could trace things. She could do autopsies on bodies, beam down and see where it happened, get a handle on the universe again. With this she was adrift, just praying for news.

"And?"

"And? And scared, I guess. And angry. And- goddamnit, Nyota. I feel useless."

Nyota nodded and took another draught of her cider, using her eyebrows to urge Christine on.

"You know, I've held a person's still-beating heart in my hand. I've delivered babies. I can kick someone's ass, I can do a fucking back flip. But none of that is useful in this situation and I have to sit at home and wring my hands waiting for a big strong man to save the day."

Christine took a gulp, forgetting that the drink was both hot and alcoholic, scalding her tongue and burning her throat as it went down. Nyota stood to get a glass of water for her friend.

"If Jim told you to get in a shuttle and--"

"In a heartbeat. Without pause. But he won't," she sneered, taking the offered water and gulping it hastily. "And I can't ask him to."

Nyota nodded and pulled a pair of PADDs, passing one across the table to Christine. "Well, this is half of my part of the list of songs, and the decryption protocol. Wanna help?"

Christine grinned and took the PADD, smiling. "Thanks, Nyota."

"We're gonna get this done. And then you are going to get in a shuttle, beat Jim there, and save the day your very own little girl self, you hear?"

"Yeah, I hear."

They lapsed into silence then, ignoring their cooling cider as each woman tapped away at the problem.

\---

The information that spewed from the locked document onto Jim's PADD was manifold and varied. Official Fleet profiles for Jim and Pike and One, pinning all sorts of crimes on them. Jim was amazed at the number of people they thought he'd murdered, some of them at the same time and sectors apart, and the fact that somehow One had been both his mother and the agent chasing her. He tagged those to send to Pike when things were calm again, when there was time to laugh over the idea of either of them being sighted in a Klingon opera house.

For now he flipped past that, past the vids of their escape from the holding, past surveillance pictures of the roughly twenty houses, apartments and ships Jim had lived in before he was fifteen.

And found something that made his stomach churn.

The video began with the Fleet insignia, white and austere against the blue field. Jim rolled his eyes.

Then it started, and Jim felt the cold dread at his core, ballooning into terror and nausea.

A young man, a little older than Jim _(three years, six months and twenty-three days, Jimmy)_ knelt on the ground, his face bruised and bloodied, his hair in matted locks, his crystal-blue eyes undimmed as he stared directly into the lens. He was gagged, and Jim could see the tension in his jaw where it worked in rage against the intrusion. He was holding a PADD, and Jim glimpsed a headline, something about Fleet laws. The date on it was two days old.

The young man was Sam.

Jim felt a cry of surprise or anguish or just plain longing as it tore his throat, and his fingers reached out to brush his brother's face. It had been _eighteen years_ since Jim had seen him, but he thought he would know Sam anywhere, any time, any situation.

A man Jim vaguely recognized as Admiral Decker, the person in charge of the Piracy Taskforce these days, was standing next to Sam, speaking, and Jim blinked blearily at him. It was hard to reconcile all the Fleet bravado with the sad and abused figure of Jim's brother on the floor.

It took a minute, but once Jim had his feet under him again, once he could stop staring at Sam, hunched and shaking, he stopped the playback.

He had to tell Pike. He had to tell Winona. He had to save Sam.

He had to save Bones.

For a minute Jim just felt the crush of all of it, all of the things they needed, all of the things he couldn't give. It was bearing down on him, his own breathing echoing loud, too loud, too much, in his ears.

"I can't do this."

He spoke the words experimentally, half expecting Pike to fly out of nowhere and smack him in the back of the head, like he had so many times.

But he was totally, crushingly alone.

"I can't save both of them."

Jim screwed his eyes shut and tried to conjure Pike or Bones, or even Winona. Someone to tell him what to do, someone to make the decision for him. But he knew it was fruitless. No one made decisions for the captain, no one told him how many lives it was acceptable to lose. He absorbed the losses, he had been doing it without Pike for nearly two years.

But usually not on behalf of his partner, and never for his brother.

Jim opened his eyes, focusing again on the huddled form of Sam on the screen. With all the will he could muster, he restarted the feed.

Decker's voice was cold and low, and Jim did everything he could to not shudder at the malice within.

"James Tiberius Kirk. We have your brother. If you ever want to see him alive again- hell, if you ever want to collect his body -you will present yourself to my lieutenant, Commander Nathaniel Komack." Decker lashed out and kicked Sam in the ribs. Jim flinched, but his brother barely reacted, a soft groan escaping his lips as he fell onto his side and lay there, eyes still burning up the space between him and the camera. Jim knew that feeling, the feeling like there was so much pain in your body that even the effort of reaction hurt. He had been there. The Fleet had driven him there. _Komack_ and _Archer_ had driven him there. "-the last place you and young Sammy here saw each other," Decker was saying, the anger in his voice fairly palpable.

Jim halted playback and forwarded the file to the three people who needed it- Christine, Pike, and Winona. He knew where he was going, now. He knew how to get there. He just didn't know what the fuck he was gonna do when he did.

\---

Leonard found the darkness, the stillness, the solitude of the brig to be mostly boring. He had spent some time reciting his alien physiology, but got annoyed at himself for forgetting the name of the fifth metacarpal bone in an Andorian's hand in the native tongue. Dammit. He _knew_ that.

He was still trying to reason it out ( _started with a p or a b, something like broughtinitous, no, that was wrong_ ) when the lights flicked back on, and Commander Nathaniel Komack stood in front of him once more.

"Hi, Pookie."

McCoy rolled his eyes. "Please state the nature of your medical emergency."

"Someone killed my parents."

"And you have feelings? Ones you need to share?"

Komack shook his head. "You should be nicer to me, McCoy."

"You shouldn't keep me here, Komack."

"You should be nice to me because I can vacuum the air from this room very easily."

McCoy shook his head. "Yeah, you could. You could also grow a pair and meet Jim on fair footing without a hostage in the mix. But you're not going to do that."

To his credit, Komack just tapped something onto his PADD.

"You're not going to," McCoy growled, "because if you were going to do it you would have fucking DONE it. Fucker."

Komack nodded. "You know what this is?" he asked, holding up the PADD.

"Looks like a PADD to me."

"Does it. Huh." Komack made a few more notes and smiled. "Because while you've been having your little hissy fit, I've been implementing a neat little program my Pop wrote. It'll be sucking the air out of your cute little cell unless you give me a good reason not to."

"Bullshit."

"Oh, sorry, Lenny. Not a very good reason." Komack smiled like ice, cold and dark, and pressed a button on the PADD.

The change on Leonard's side of the forcefield was instant. He heard the air handlers kick into high gear, and he gasped down a last breath to stave off the hypoxia as long as he could, feeling ridiculous as his cheeks puffed full of oxygen and he tried not to panic.

 _Nursing a whiskey in a run down shithole on Cygnus IV, the gorgeous boy in the corner sidling up to him. "I'm looking to hire a doctor. For a ship."_

 _"Ship on the water or ship in the sky?"_

 _"Don't play coy. Ship in the sky."_

 _"No."_

 _"Don't you want adventure?"_

 _"Space isn't adventure. It's death and disease wrapped in darkness and silence."_

 _The pretty young man had nodded and turned to walk away when there was a heavy sensation on the side of Leonard's neck, and he descended into darkness._

Darkness like this, black and red spots blooming in front of his eyes.

 _A blonde sexpot of a nurse, winking at him when he barked at her to do inventory._

 _"I'm very curious as to how likely it is that I'll get to do a thorough inventory of the contents of your pants."_

He was on his knees, running out of time, nothing to grab for. He could feel his capillaries erupting under the skin, pressure building.

 _A beautiful baby girl in his arms, pink and new, making surprised faces up at him._

 _"Welcome to the universe, beautiful," he whispered, pushing his surgical mask aside to kiss her forehead before laying her in Jocelyn's arms._

The air handlers stopped their roar, and McCoy looked up at Komack through the barrier. The man was steely, his blue eyes opalescent from this angle. Leonard wasn't surprised to find his arms weak, the muscles screaming with the exertion of holding his weight. He rolled onto his back and coughed wetly.

"I'm not playing, McCoy. We know Kirk has a soft spot for you and for people he thinks are family. What else does he _cherish_?"

Leonard just gasped, gulping down air almost involuntarily.

Komack smiled again, a knife slash against his skin. "You think about it, Lenny. I'll be back in a little bit. Oh, and next time, I won't turn it off before you pass out. Doesn't take long to get to brain death with no air. Think he'd still want you if you were a fucking vegetable?"

The fucking arrogant son of a bitch turned on his heel and marched out, once again plunging Leonard into darkness.

But at least he was alive. For now.

\---

Christine had given up on decryption almost as soon as she started. It turned out that, despite her many talents, inputting stanzas of epic poetry into five different programs was dull and tedious and she needed to DO something.

She'd convinced Spock to give her access to the communication network, to see if she could suss out still frames of what Nathaniel Komack had looked like.

By the time Jim's message got to her, she had three. She couldn't escape the feeling that there was something familiar about his face, but the pictures were blurry at best and she was tired and, to be honest, Nyota was starting to look a little like Leonard, so she shoved the idea to the back of her mind.

Until Jim's note.

 _Christine-  
This is what's in the encrypted packet._

 _I'm not saying where I'm going, cause you're not coming. Please stay safe._

 _I love you._

 _Yours for always,  
JTK_

She smiled sadly, reading it over a few times. She hated this, all of this. She hated that Jim was gone, she hated that Leonard was a fucking captive, she hated that she felt like some war widow, getting pity from the crew when all she wanted was her boys.

She took a deep breath before opening the file Jim had attached.

It was the kind of video the Fleet sent when they had a captive and wanted something - a group of Fleeters surrounding a prisoner, giving their demands.

Christine felt cold shock work through her system at the calm man solemnly intoning _James Tiberius Kirk. We have your brother._

She slammed her hand onto the controls, and before she so much as watched another moment, she was gesturing franticly to Uhura.

"Nyota. I-- you-- Nyota."

Uhura leaned over Christine's shoulder, peering at the screen. "What am I seeing?"

"The man, there. He said-- that's Sam."

"Sam?" Nyota knitted her eyebrows together. "Sam _Kirk_?"

Christine nodded, the panic beginning to well up in her chest. "Only brother Jim has."

"They've got the same eyes," Nyota mused, peering at the video. "And the same kinda... face-shape?"

Christine nodded. "The eyes-" she swallowed hard. Fuck, fuck, no. The eyes and the face shape.

Praying she was wrong, hoping against all hope that it was passing madness, Christine keyed up the pictures of Komack she'd been working with.

"Do you think?"

Nyota stared, her hand on Christine's shoulder.

Finally, she spoke. "Run a facial structural analysis."

Christine nodded, entering the commands to compare the two pictures. But something, in her heart or her gut or where ever else people keep their intuition, told her that it would be positive.

"I think--" She swallowed hard. "I think Jim's brother is Nathaniel Komack."

Nyota nodded once, jerkily. "I-- fuck."

Something was horribly wrong here. And unless they were wrong - both of them - then Jim was walking into a trap.

\---

Leonard felt the light return slowly, filtering through fabric.

He knew he had slept, there had been dreams and movement and something was _off_. He reached out of Christine, for Jim, and found his arms constrained.

He laughed.

"We playing a game?" he asked the air, expecting one or both of his partners to slither up his body, leaving imprints of their lips wherever they rested. "Am I a prisoner today?"

 _Prisoner_.

The word brought the truth crashing heavily into him, free falling and gaining momentum as he suddenly felt the cold metal beneath his back, the clothes that rested on his skin. A voice spoke, and Leonard knew the speaker without seeing him.

"Today, and until Kirk comes for you."

Komack.

"Where--" Leonard tried to remember to regulate his respiration, 14 breaths per minute, like he told Jim after a nightmare.

 _in and out, kid, it'll fade, we're here_

But it didn't fade, and they weren't here, and all Leonard had were his lungs and his heart and a vague hope that someone would come or he would escape before this psychopath decided he was more trouble than he was worth. Somewhat frantically, Leonard began testing his bonds for weak spots, for give, for anything. But he was held fast, and all his thrashing did was make him feel like a fool.

"You're in a shuttle," Komack said. "We had to ditch my ship."

Leonard was actually impressed by the man's candor. "Shouldn't you be keeping me off balance?"

Komack laughed. "Shouldn't I be laughing maniacally while petting a white cat?" Leonard felt, rather than saw, him shake his head. "I'm not a bad guy, Lenny. And your little boyfriend isn't a saint. He killed my dads. And then he laughed about it. I just need--" Komack's voice stuttered, and he went silent.

Leonard rolled his eyes into the echoing quiet, but he was pretty sure the effect was lost behind the blindfold. "And your people killed his dad and kept him on the run most of his life."

The beeping of the shuttle ringing in Leonard's ears.

"Don't you ever speak of George Kirk to me, pirate. You don't know that story, and you never will," Komack hissed, his voice high and cold in a way that was somehow more menacing than the fact that he had literally sucked the air out of Leonard's lungs who knows how many hours ago.

Leonard thought of a thousand equally acerbic things to snap at Komack, but something in the man's tone seemed deadly. For once in his life, Leonard actually let sense rule, and he simply snorted. "Why are we in a shuttle?"

"Kirk's skittish around the Fleet. He'd bolt at a warship. So I get him where I want him, I kill him, I decide what to do with you, and then I head home and maybe have a snack or a nap."

"You don't know what you're gonna do with me?" Leonard didn't let fear creep into his voice. If there was anything that nigh on three years of piracy had taught him, it was how to fake confidence.

Komack laughed, fucking smug little shit. "No, Lenny. It'd be a shame to kill you, you're a great doctor. But you're a pirate."

"I'd never work for the Fleet."

"Sure you would. If we could give you Joanna back."

Leonard shook his head to clear it. "Liar," he drawled, letting all the contempt he felt for this puffed-up pompous Fleet fucker flow into the word.

"Not about that."

He thought about the implications of what Komack was saying- his little girl. And all for walking away from the life he had struggled so hard to rebuild. But Joanna had a family without him now; had Clay and Jocelyn. And she had been three when he left. Part of him, the part he hated, wondered if she even remembered him, or if his presents got new cards before they were passed along.

"Think about it," Komack said, raising McCoy from the reverie he hadn't realized he was in. "And when I kill Kirk, we can _talk_."

Leonard sneered at the implication that he would leave Jim's side if he were in trouble, but deep down, he had started to wonder, just the tiniest bit, if Komack knew something he didn't.

And that scared the fuck out of him.

\---

Jim felt the cold sweat break out on his forehead as he read Christine's message.

He had known it was a trap - why would the Fleet go so far as to dangle his brother and his partner in front of him if it wasn't? - but the idea that is was his brother behind it, well. Jim felt so many things about that that he had come full circle to numb.

Mostly he was scared.

The proof that Christine had sent - the pictures, the facial analysis, the voiceprint from the conversation Sam had with Spock, it was irrefutable. Jim didn't know this angry man, the one who hated him this much, but he did know that if he was made to choose between Sam and Bones, he didn't think he could.

He had long asserted that he didn't believe in no-win scenarios; when Pike tried to prep him for the Fleet, when his mother ran off and left him with his scumbag of an uncle, when Sam ran away. Jim might not have had the _power_ in those situations, but by no means was he hopeless.

Absently, he fingered the ring, his father's ring, suspended on a chain around his neck. Christine had given him the chain for his last birthday, making a remark that someday he would want to wear his own promises on his hands, and his neck could hold memories.

 _I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine._

It was never going to be easy. That had never been in the cards for Jim Fucking Kirk. He would always be surrounded by the ripples of other people's pain; his father's infamy, his mother's mourning, his brother's disappearance. And now he was facing down the very real possibility of losing his brother and his Bones. Of going home to Christine (or worse, dying and leaving her alone, he hated _alone_ ) without the thing that held them together.

Jim saw how that would end, the two of them clinging to the dying lie of their romance as a couple, sleeping in Ole Miss t-shirts and aching for the cold space in their bed to be warm just once more until it became unbearable and one or both of them pointed out that it was all Jim's fault.

He didn't want that future.

There was the future where Jim saved the day - where Sam fell tearfully into his arms when they met and the universe coalesced between them, apologies and love and the confession that Sam never wanted to leave Jim. And Sam came back to _Enterprise_ with him, brought back Bones unharmed and smiling for once, and Jim lived the charmed life he and Sam used to talk about on the roof of the house on Coltar IV, in New Riverside, watching the stars and trying to find Winona's ship in the specks of light in the night sky.

And there was the future where Jim never laded by the house in New Riverside, his shuttle shot to pieces before it ever even saw the sprawling rancher where Frank had "raised" him for the five years between Pike leaving and Sam leaving.

Jim laughed at himself softly, realizing for the first time that he kept track of his childhood by who left; by Winona's missions and Pike's bowing out and Sam's disappearance. There were times _before_ and _after_ each of those events, time that Jim could only see as transitory, waiting for someone else to fuck off out of his life.

He wasn't going to let Sam take McCoy from him.

And he wasn't going to leave Sam.

Faced with the choice, phaser to his head, Jim would lay down his weapons, he decided, and offer his own self.

Because it was the only thing he had owned for long enough to really call it _his_.

\---

Nate Komack pushed a hand through his blonde hair - a few shades darker than his brother's, he knew - and smiled to himself.

There was a time when his identity had bothered him; when he had an internal war between _George Samuel Kirk, Jr_ and _Nathaniel Ranger Komack-Archer_. But it had died down over the years, as he had grown into the person his fathers had wanted him to be, into the person he wanted to be.

Nate remembered Jim, remembered the scrawny 11-year-old who stole their father's car to chase him down the day he ran away. He remembered the shining tow-headed boy who loved Chris Pike more than anything, who had wept like he was lost in the woods when Winona said he had gone away. Nate even, distantly, remembered the swaddled lump that his mother held while she cried, leaving Nate to sit alone with his teddy trying to understand where Daddy was.

He also remembered the bloody killer who had cut down Nate's fathers on the feeds, and then hugged Pike and _laughed_. He tried not to blame Jim for that, he couldn't have known who Archer and Komack were to Nate. Jim didn't know how Samuel Kirk had stepped off the Vulcan freighter onto Earth, and found a bevy of Fleet troops waiting for him. Jim didn't know how they had taken and beaten him, he didn't know how they starved him and cut him. He didn't know how Komack had come to Sam, how he had held the boy and soothed his sobs, how he let Nate be someone _else_. Someone who wasn't George Kirk, Jr.

They'd let him pick his own name and everything - Nathaniel for the book he'd given Jim on his last birthday, _The House of the Seven Gables_ , and Ranger for the job he'd told Pike he'd wanted to do.

He'd thought they would find him, that a name like that was a beacon. He thought news of Komack and Archer adopting would have been galaxy-wide.

But no one ever came to rescue Sam, and slowly but surely, Nate had come to rest in his mind. If no one wanted Sam Kirk, no one cared enough to look for him, then he would be a person who someone needed. He would be the son to his fathers, the cadet near the top of his class, the husband of Aurelan. The things he could never had done, wearing the Kirk name around his neck like a lead weight.

Nate had regrets, for sure. He regretted not saving Jimmy from the life he had grown up to lead. He regretted not killing Frank and Winona and setting both of them free. He regretted that the only family he really knew, the only people who had _cared_ for him, had been murdered by his brother.

But Nate had also lived the best life he thought he could have had. He whistled tunelessly, guiding the shuttle he and McCoy were in to a rest outside of the farmhouse in New Riverside, and fingered the wide, flat band Aurelan had slid onto his left ring finger before he left. They had a life to look forward to; she was a brilliant botanist and he was next in line for the chairmanship of the taskforce. All Nate had to do was bring in the man who had been his brother, and his place would be assured.

He glanced down at McCoy, nudging the prone body with the toe of his boot. "You awake, Lenny?"

He didn't expect a reply: he'd sedated the man before they landed. Nate had work to do and, and even restrained, the doctor was a handful. If he'd had it to do over again, he would have taken the other one, the nurse, to lure Jim. But McCoy had been there, had challenged Nate, and he couldn't resist shaking down the man his brother had come to love.

The reports said they were in love.

Nate could see why; he could see the appeal of challenge, the handsome features, the rough voice, and surgeon's hands. He didn't truly _want_ to kill McCoy. The man's only real crime was loving Jim. And not being able to tell him what Jim cherished, - if Jim missed his brother at all.

More gently than was really warranted, Nate slipped a gag into McCoy's mouth, securing it behind the doctor's head. No sense having him spout off if he woke before Jim got here.

Smiling again, Nate opened the door of the shuttle and stepped, blinking, into the cold sunlight of the world. There should still be a few hours before things really got started, and Nate had to get the guest rooms ready.

\---

Jim landed his shuttle by the quarry, dimly aware of the irony inherent in bringing a spacecraft to the place he sent his father's Corvette plummeting headlong into the abyss the day Sam had run away.

He peered over the edge of the crater, idly wondering if there was anything left of the car, or if the intervening years had washed away the paint and rubber and crumpled metal. There was water in the ravine now, reflecting the cool orange light from the secondary star as it reached its apogee. Jim hugged his jacket tightly around his shoulders, shivering at the place more than the early fall chill.

It had stunk for days after he sent the car over, of fuel and rubber and melting paint as the fire burned itself out. They could smell it back at the house, and Jim hoped that maybe concern for his well being would have brought Sam home. But neither that nor the beating Frank had given him to explain "Bad Idea, Jimmy" had brought Jim's erstwhile protector back.

He kicked a pebble off the edge of the ravine, wishing there was a smear of red, a blackened spot, something to show that he had been here, that he had _hurt_. But Bones always said that nature was the best at healing, so Jim grabbed his rucksack up, shoved his hands in his pockets, and began the long trek down rural route 35 to the old farmhouse, looming like a memory on the horizon.

\---

Nate had not been prepared for the number of emotions he felt as he watched Jim walk down the dirt road from the quarry. The place had always been isolated; broad stretches of land fanned out in every direction, insurmountable barriers between them and any possible neighbors, anyone who might have helped the boys when they were little. The house itself had deteriorated since the Kirks had left; the yard neglected to weeds, shingles sliding off the roof and shutters tilting off windows with broken panes.

It was the same road, the branch off of RR35, that Sam had walked down the day he left. _You're going to be okay, you always are. Always doing everything right._ The fields had gone brown in the intervening years and the suns seemed more alien after his time on Earth, but Nate could still see the skinny ghost of Sam Kirk in his black jeans and his khaki backpack, dogged by his mop-topped baby brother. _I can't be a Kirk in this house. Show me how to do that, and I'll stay._

Nate moved from the window to just inside the doorway, relatively sure he hadn't been seen. He knew Jimmy was smart - Jimmy had always been smart - but he was foolishly impulsive. And rushing in to save his lover and his brother was exactly what Nate was counting on.

\---

Jim stared impassively at the front door of the house that his uncle had reminded him, time and time again, did not belong to him.

Except it kinda did because Frank was dead and there was no will and everything went to Winona as next of kin.

Which was why he wasn't sure if he should knock or not.

He knew the layout as he entered: staircase going up immediately in front of him, living room to the left, Frank's bedroom, the forbidden zone, on the right. Jim thought that Sam would either take the high ground of the stairs or the ambush of the living room. Either way, it didn't matter. Jim hadn't come to fight.

So he stood and he stared, knowing that Bones couldn't afford the delay. Then he swallowed, laid his sidearm on the ground, and nudged the door open with his knee.

"I'm unarmed," he announced, lying about the knife in his boot as he edged into the dark house. _Always let them underestimate you_ , he thought, and hated himself for treating his brother like a threat, like a Fleeter. Even if he was one. "My hands are where you can see them."

His first reply was the sound of a phaser charging.

"Hi, Jimmy. Lay down on the floor."

It was Sam's voice, and the thrill of how close it was ran through Jim like a current.

"Sammy?"

There was a ragged breath, one that might have even been a sob, from Jim's left. The living room. Jim decided against rushing in and hugging his brother, or anything else that could be construed as an attack. Instead, he sank to his knees, put his hands on the back of his head and lay down on the carpet.

He heard the soft footsteps head towards him and stop, just out of arm's reach. Jim spared a glance to his left and saw what might have once been impeccably-shined black boots, now marred with the dirt and dust and other natural muck that such things tend to pick up in a natural, non-starship environment.

"Why did you come here?" Sam's voice was soft, and something in it sent every nerve in Jim's body directly on edge.

"You sent me an invitation."

Jim half expected a kick in the ribs for his smart mouth - it was what the original bearer of the name _Komack_ would have done - but it didn't come. Jim allowed himself to relax a fraction.

"For who?"

Jim shook his head slightly. "For both of you."

"No. For _who_?" The growl was low in his voice, and Jim was afraid of the threat it represented, if not the man himself.

"For you, and for McCoy. Is he--"

Sam cut across him. "Choose one."

"No."

That seemed to shock Sam enough to take a tentative step back. "You choose or I shoot him."

Jim stared resolutely ahead at the staircase, his arms starting to tire from holding the position. He let his elbows sag to the floor before he answered. "It's a loser's game. Pike -- You remember Chris Pike? -- Pike would say the only way to win is not to play. I'm not choosing."

 _That_ almost earned him a kick in the ribs, but Sam stopped just before the toe of his boot connected and staggered back against the wall. "You fucking idiot," he drawled. "Chris Pike never said that."

Jim scoffed. "Chris Pike said that all the fucking time. I would know."

" _No_ ," Sam hissed. "You know who said that? George _fucking_ Kirk said that."

"You were three, Sammy. You didn't know him any better than I did."

Sam shot forward and landed kneeling with one knee in the small of Jim's back and one hand tangled in his hair, shoving his face into the carpet, the bunt force of the phaser's muzzle pressed, cold, in the back of Jim's neck.

"My _name_ ," Jim's brother growled, "is Nathaniel. And if you think anyone gets anywhere in the Fleet without studying the _Kelvin_ Incident--" his breathing was irregular, and Jim knew he could twist out of this grip if he wanted to, take his brother's place like it was just a bar fight against some anonymous gorilla, but he let Sam have the control because apparently he needed it. "--redefined our way of thinking about transporters--" Sam was babbling. Jim had his brother so worked up, with just the mere mention of George Kirk, and okay, his presence and the house and the _memories_ , that he was babbling like a bad villain in a comic book. Jim wanted to laugh. "--before he beamed over, he took his son, George Samuel, Junior, from their second officer and occasional bed fellow, Christopher Pike, and said _It's a loser's game, Sammy, don't ever play it_. And then he died."

Sam punctuated his point by lifting Jim's head slightly and slamming it back to the floor. Jim thanked God for ugly, thick carpeting, because he might be choking on dust, but his head was already reeling from the fucking cluster bomb Sam just dropped on his life and the lack of blunt trauma was welcome.

"Bedfellow?"

Jim heard the smirk. "He never told you that? You call him dad and all- let's just say Winona was relieved when you came out with blonde hair."

"Liar."

"I guess it runs in the family, fucking anything that walks."

Jim had fucking _had_ it. He reached his hands up to control Sam's wrist and begin freeing himself, but found the phaser dug deeper into his neck as soon as his arms twitched.

"Dumb move, Jimmy."

Jim let out a sob of exasperation. "Why are you doing this? If you wanted me to come, all you had to do was fucking _ask_."

Sam laughed, a bitter hollow sound. "And after eighteen years you would have come running to my aid?"

"Yes."

The word was whispered, almost silent, but it knocked through the room like a wind. Sam loosened his grip on Jim's hair, but still hadn't regulated his breathing. _Fourteen breaths a minute_ Jim thought, sardonically. What Bones would tell him was "normal."

"You know how many times I stared at the sky like that fucking mouse in that fucking movie, wishing you were looking at the same stars?" Jim knew he was pressing his luck, but he had things he needed to tell his brother, things he needed answered.

Sam let go of Jim and slid off him to slump against the wall of the foyer again. "I'm sorry I left you. I always wanted to come find you, I wanted to come back for you, get you out of here."

 _Jim hid after he broke the window, hid in the closet in the foyer, right there, behind the coats, like it would protect him because he was seven and it seemed like it might. But Frank had found him, dragged him up by his collar and slammed him against the wall, hollering and waving his fist._

 _"Put him down."_

 _Sam was only ten, but he was old enough to protect his brother, old enough to step between Frank and Jim._

 _"Go back upstairs and do your homework, Sammy."_

 _"Put. My brother. Down."_

 _Frank sneered at the threat, the boy like an angry puppy bearing his teeth._

"But you didn't," Jim wasn't trying to accuse, it was just fact. He pushed himself up to sitting, slumped against the first stair of the staircase with his knees tucked under his chin.

"No, I didn't. Because I was fourfuckingteen years old and Frank was a grown man. And because I couldn't."

"You promised--"

"I know what I promised."

 _Sam lay in his room after the beating, nursing his sore jaw and his aching ribs. What the fuck was Frank's fucking problem? He had half a beer and Sam was a punching bag._

 _Jimmy was always perfect, always hopping to do what that asshole needed, like he was their dad. Sam remembered his father, he remembered the way he smelled and the song he sang, the cowboy song. But the memories slipped a little every time he grasped for them, and Sam was scared that someday, he wouldn't even have any to give Jimmy, when he needed them._

 _"Sammy?"_

 _Jim's small voice drifted into the room, and Sam saw his brother, silhouetted in the doorway._

 _"Go back to bed. You'll get us both in trouble."_

 _Jim took a tentative step into the room, holding Mr. Tusks the red elephant in his still-chubby hand. Sam thought that Jim should have outgrown Mr. Tusks by now, but at night they both clung to what they could find, something to make them feel less alone._

 _"Can I sleep in here?"_

 _Sam rolled his eyes, but he scooted over and Jim clambered into bed next to him._

 _"I miss mom," Jim whispered, and Sam just nodded. Jim was too young to understand that this was the way things were, mom or no. They were Lost Boys, like Peter Pan. Except Sam knew that Jim would be Peter, and he would be the one in the rabbit ears._

 _"I know, Jimmy. But you have me, and I got you, and we don't need mom or Uncle Frank or Chris or anyone. We're gonna run away, you and me. We're gonna get our own ship and just sail until this planet, this dumb town is nothing but a blur on the viewscreen."_

 _It was a familiar story, the story Sam told himself every time he took a punch. He kept whispering to himself, long after Jimmy dropped off to sleep next to him._

"Do you know what he did to me when you left?"

"No, but I'd imagine it was pretty much what he did to me before I left."

Jim didn't have a reply to that.

"I'm not that kid anymore, Jimmy. And neither are you. Let it go."

There was a tense silence. Jim stared at the palms of his hands and Sam let his head loll back against the wall, the phaser still pointed at Jim, but his grip relaxed.

It wasn't going to be okay. Because at the end of the day, Jim wasn't sorry for his murders and Sam wasn't sorry for leaving. They were going to have this talk, and then they'd go back to their ships and they'd still be Fleet and Guild. They'd still be enemies, blood or no.

"Where's McCoy?"

Sam closed his eyes. "In my shuttle. Knocked out. But fine. I was never gonna--"

"I need to see him," Jim pushed himself to standing. "Knight in pirate armor and whatnot."

Sam looked up at his brother, blue eyes meeting across the void of their fucking messed up childhood.

"You killed--" Sam choked on the names.

"The men who adopted you. Archer and Komack"

"Yeah."

Jim raked a hand through his hair. "I'm not sorry I killed them. I'm sorry it hurt you, and I'm sorry for the fact that I was a fucking animal when I did it, but--" he tried to breathe, tried not to let the words take him back to that place. "I have to protect the people I love. Just like you do."

"I don't know if I can-- If _we_ can--"

"It's been a long time. We can work up to forgiving. Let's start with a walk. To your shuttle."

Jim offered his hand. Sam stared at it for a long moment. "After you see McCoy is okay, are you leaving?"

Jim laughed. Not unkindly, more the kind of laugh Bones said he used when there was too much _quiet_ and not enough _Jim_ in a room. "We got a lot to talk about, Sa-- Nathaniel. I'm staying'til you at least explain the wedding band."

Sam took the hand his brother offered and let himself be hauled to his feet.

\---

The only bed left in the house was the one in Jim's old room and was shaped like a racecar. Jim briefly thought about the sheer amount of shit he was going to get for it before hauling Bones' unconscious ass up the flight of stairs and laying him down on it. It was proportioned for the short kid Jim had been when he lived here; Bones looked huge, his long legs dangling over the dusty hood of the car, feet nearly resting on the floor.

Jim shrugged off his jacket and folded it to shove it under his partner's head as Sam laid a blanket salvaged from his shuttle's emergency kit over him, and tucked a PADD into his hand.

"He'll be disoriented when he wakes up," he muttered, by way of explanation. "It tells him he's safe, to come downstairs. He'll either believe it or break a chair over my head."

Jim smiled and bent double to kiss Bones on the forehead. "He'll believe it. Smartest idiot I ever met." He smiled fondly, memories of how trusting the doctor really was flitting across his vision.

Sam smiled, too, and Jim thought he lost a few years off his face when he did, looking more like the young star-of-the-Fleet that he was.

"Let's talk," Jim said, gesturing towards the door with his head. "And let lazy Bones sleep."

[part 2](http://community.livejournal.com/velocicopter/2638.html)|[part 4](http://community.livejournal.com/velocicopter/2236.html)


	5. FIC: If We Lived And Were Good (Part 4/4)

_**FIC: If We Lived And Were Good (Part 4/4)**_  
The brothers found themselves downstairs in the room that had once been the living room. It was, like the rest of the house, shot all to shit. The single armchair had been neglected to ruin, the cushions dotted in some kind of slimy red mold.

"Reminds me of Tarsus," Jim mused, wiping a finger across one of the moist patches. "Of the crap that killed the crops."

Sam paused where he was inspecting the old end table, trying to decide of the pseudowood was too rotted out to sit on it. "You were there?"

Jim nodded. "After Winona figured Frank out, she took me there. For a fresh start." He laughed, weakly. "It was good, for a while."

"So the rumor?"

Komack and Archer had listed Sam Kirk among those killed in Kodos' massacre, hoping to stop Pike's line of questioning when he had gotten a little too close, once. Sam had agreed; by then he didn't want to be found, by then he was starting to accept this "Nathaniel" character, the one who liked his classes and played rugby on his school's team. Throwing the meddling Guildies off his trail seemed a great idea.

"Never believed it," Jim sighed. "Small colony, and we knew the right people to know when your name was put on the lists."

"Oh." Sam turned back to the table, giving it a tentative kick. The pseudowood splintered. "Seems like this place is a wreck."

Jim nodded and gave up trying to find something to sit on, opting instead to sink against the wall and stare at his prodigal brother. "So. How about those last eighteen years?"

Sam laughed and copied Jim's seating solution, but his back kept its military rigidity in contrast to the slump of Jim's shoulders, the ease with which he pulled a knee to his chest and slung a lazy arm over it.

"They got me about 45 seconds after I left." He laughed. "I was dumb as shit, signed onto a freighter as George Kelvin. Someone figured it out, ratted to the Fleet, and they nabbed me before I took a breath and a half on Earth."

Jim cocked his head, waiting for Sam to go on. He took a shaky breath.

"Later, a lot later, when I knew more, I knew what they'd done, why they did it. But, well. Fourteen. Basically, they took me to a cell and did the things they do to pirates. Found out later that it took me twelve days to break." Sam closed his eyes, remembering. "I was pretty sure they were gonna kill me. They probably should have. And I was lying there - they have these electric cuffs, awful things - and dad -- that is, Komack -- he came in and told me that I'd done good and he took them off and," Sam breathed deeply. "And he took me out of the prison and to his home and even if it was just a different kind of jail cause I couldn't _leave_..." He trailed off, seeing the dark look in Jim's eyes.

"George killed himself and Pike left me and Frank beat me bloody three nights a week. Dad might not have let me out of the house at first, but goddamn it, Jim. He actually gave a shit--" Sam scrubbed at his face with his palms. "You think I'm an idiot."

Jim shook his head. "Not even. I think you were brainwashed."

Sam shook his head. "Yeah, well. Maybe I was. And maybe Dad and Pop gave me a fucking home and a new identity and never smacked me around for not hanging up a towel."

"Why Nathaniel?"

Sam laughed, chasing the hazy memories of his ordeal back to the foggy corners of his mind. "Nathaniel Ranger," he corrected. "Cause you were obsessed with Hawthorn, and cause I told Pike I wanted to be a forest ranger. I thought- I was fourteen, you know -I thought you'd see it, or he would, and someone would come and save me. But you never came."

Jim sighed. "We were looking for Sam Kirk."

"Why'd you stop?"

"We never did."

They stared at each other, the uncomfortable silence oddly fitting in the empty house. "You never found me."

"You changed your name, we were looking in the wrong places. Winona said if the fleet had you, they'd taunt her-"

"Because the universe revolves around her?"

"Because your dads hate her," Jim shrugged. He didn't claim to understand his mother.

"I guess she was wrong."

There was a long silence.

"When Pike found me, we--"

"Yeah, how did that happen?"

Jim smiled sadly. "I lasted 'til I was 16. Winona and I moved around, living here and there and in between. We had been on Kelton IV for a month or so when they called off the hunt for her."

Sam nodded. "I remember that day."

"I walked out that night. Figured I was good to go, maybe I'd find you and we could have space adventures."

"But you found Pike."

"Yeah, eight years later on the floor of a bar."

Sam waited.

"It was-- my birthday. Five years ago. I was pissed, I was drunk as shit, I picked a fight with some gorillas wearing sleeves. Probably slavers. Pike was in the right place at the right time, because he's _Pike_ and he does that, and took me out of there. Cleaned me up, got me working, gave me his ship after-- after-- Sammy, you know about him and Number One?"

Sam nodded. "We've been chasing them, too. On the taskforce."

"She was having his baby, he retired to raise her. Emily." Jim grinned. "She's two, nearly. Great kid, loves the fuck out of me."

Sam smiled. "And the doctor?"

"I love him. And Christine. Our girl. It-- were you telling the truth about Pike and Winona and George?"

Sam shrugged. "I don't know. There's intelligence both ways. But I was trying to-- well, you know."

Jim nodded. "Wind me up. I know. How, uh, how did you find me?"

"Whoever you left in charge of your ship, Spock I assume?" Jim nodded, and Sam went on. "We figured out that he, and he must have gotten this from Pike, he always went towards the Hromi Cluster in late December, early January."

"And you just happened to have an encrypted packet with a vid of you being tortured lying around?"

Sam laughed. "This from the kid who stole a car when he was eleven. Jimmy, come on. You don't have a predictable bone in your fucking body. Sightings of _Enterprise_ followed no other pattern. I figured you fucked off for some amount of time around the George shit people do. If I was wrong and you were there, good news for me. If I was right, I had something to get you to come find me. Add Dr. Hotass up there, and it was a pretty solid plan."

"Dr. Hotass?"

Sam grinned. "What, I can't look?"

"You're wearing a ring."

"I can look around the store without buying."

Jim shuttered exaggeratedly. "Gross, Sam. Gross. Tell me about the ring."

"Her name is Aurelan. Fleet geneticist. She cured the plague on Cardassia Prime, the one you sold the Bajorans."

A grumpy voice piped up from the door. "That wasn't a plague when we sold it, it was an industrial dish cleaner."

Jim grinned up at Bones, who was observing the scene with a look that could only be translated as something in the vague neighborhood of _Jim, I swear to God_.

"Hey," Jim stood and crossed to the entry offering his hand to the doctor, who took it with no small amount of consternation. "You know who this is?" he asked, gesturing to the other man in the room, who pushed himself into a standing position and stood formally. _Parade rest_ , Jim thought idly. His brother was a real military man.

Bones nodded. "The motherfucker who's been torturing me. Nate Komack."

Jim grinned and glanced at the other man, who smiled back. Something in their faces, the eyes and the jaws and that spark that traveled between them brought it to a conclusion in Leonard's head.

"Holy-- Jim, is it?"

Jim, always one for defying biology, grinned wider. "Bones, I want you to meet my brother. Sa- Nathaniel. Nathaniel Komack."

McCoy bit his tongue and offered his hand because that was what you did when you met your partner's family, no matter how much of a shit he was.

"Leonard McCoy," he said, as the man took his hand. "But I think you knew that. Wanted for child support and--"

"Other trumped up shit," Nate supplied, and Jim thought he would have to take some time to get used to thinking of his brother with a new name, but he had every intention of needing to do it. "Designed to get you here, to get Jim here."

Bones nodded once, then hauled back and punched Nate, as hard as he could, in the jaw.

"Pleased to meet you," he growled. "And now we're even for the decompression stunt."

Nate looked at Bones through the fingers of the hand that had shot up to grip his cheek. "Ow," he furrowed his brow. "And yeah, I guess we are."

\---

Christine didn't cry when she saw Leonard's face on the screen.

She was kinda proud of that.

"I'm alright, Chrissy. There's--" He glanced over his shoulder. "There's some major shit going down. Jim found Sam--"

"I know. I know." She was a little breathless with joy- if Leonard was calling here, if there were voices in the background, then maybe things were okay. "When are you--"

He shrugged. "Soon, I think. Jim and Nate -- we're calling him Nate, by the by, not Sam -- are working some things out, but I think we'll be home soon. Are you good?"

She nodded. "I hate both of you for doing this, but come back and it'll be okay."

"Jim says you helped?"

"I did more than help," she scoffed, but the bravado was faked. "I fucking saved the day."

Leonard grinned. "Of course you did. How's Leach's infection?"

Christine laughed, taken off guard. Of course Leonard was thinking of his patients. It was why she loved him.

Effortlessly, she switched into nurse mode and began reporting on the patients he had left behind. He nodded approvingly and smiled.

"And how's my head nurse?"

"She's wondering where you hid the ketorolac tromethamine, doctor, but she's making do."

He laughed then, and Christine wondered if there had ever been a better noise in the galaxy. "We're out of it," he said. "I've been prescribing indomethacin for three weeks."

She nodded. "Got it. You should probably tell me that."

"Of course." He studied her face intently for a moment, like he was looking for chinks in her armor. Fuck that, she was impenetrable. "Christine, how are _you_?"

"How the hell do you think I am, Leonard, with you kidnapped and Jim off on some kind of mission where his brother is both hostage and captor?" She reached back to rub at her neck. "The bed is big and cold, the shifts are long and I'm going infuckingsane. But you'll come back, and you can make it up to me then."

He nodded, and she saw his fingers twitch the same way they did when he hesitated to wake Jim from a nightmare. A movement of _how do I help?_

"Come back, okay?"

"Always."

"I love you."

"You too. And love from Jim."

"Tell him happy birthday."

"Yes, ma'am."

She nodded and signed off the transmission, sitting back in the too-big chair he kept in the CMO's office. There was a moment for reflection; a moment to think that she loved them and she was relieved and she was still scared and dear god how did Leonard do this job on a daily basis and still have the energy to keep up with her and Jim? And the moment passed as Conners stuck his head into the room to ask her about a dosage. She stood and rolled up her sleeves. Back to work.

\---

The brothers had talked through the day. Jim tried to get Leonard to leave a few times, insisting that Christine needed him, that he needed to get back, that there were things to attend to. But Leonard insisted on staying and, after a while, Jim gave up.

"Just... just let us talk, okay? You're not leaving, I get it. But it's been eighteen years and he's married and... I need to know him, Bones. I need to know my brother."

Leonard agreed. He had no intention of getting in Jim's way, but there was no fucking way he was going to leave the man he loved alone with a Fleeter who had shown no qualms about torture a few hours earlier. Blood or no.

So Leonard took time exploring the house, peeking into rooms that had been closed to the world for ages.

In the attic, rickety boards creaking beneath his feet, Leonard found a box marked "BURN." He spent a few moments trying to decide if he was the Pandora of this wasted planet before he pried it open.

Luckily, or perhaps because Pandora was a myth and most boxes don't contain hardships, all Leonard found were holos and paper with ink smears and, at the bottom, three folded up flannel shirts.

He spent time reading the ink smudges as best he could, scrutinized the holos, regarded the shirts. The box was the most interesting thing he found in the house, not counting the revelation that Jim fucking Kirk had a goddamn race car bed.

The box appeared to be the sparse memories of Winona Kirk, in regards to her husband.

The holos were of Winona and Sam and George, including a series of strangely domestic scenes with cookies and a plastic Christmas tree. Leonard didn't laugh, but the idea of a Kirk Family Christmas, pregnant Winona clutching her distended belly while a Santa-hatted George held Sam, seemed to be the most bizarre thing he'd encountered in this entire fucked up universe.

And that was coming from a guy whose _partner's brother_ had tried to kill him. He still wasn't quite over that. He reflected dimly that a little over a week after this holo was taken, George was spacedust, Winona gave birth and Sam began the long descent into disenfranchisement that would climax with his disappearance.

He regarded the scribbles on paper with some uncertainty. He knew the handwriting from the birthday notes Winona sent to him and Christine and Jim. The first one was dated 2233.005, and began "Dear George,".

He put them back in the box without looking at the others.

Leonard lugged the "BURN" box down the stairs and left it by the door for Jim and Sam. Nate. There was something fundamentally wrong about denying a person the name they chose - like calling a pig a goat - but Leonard was having the worst time reclassifying Sam Kirk in his head, relabeling him to Nathaniel Komack.

Maybe because Sam was the brother Jim had been searching for and Nathaniel was the dick that tortured Leonard. Maybe.

The boys were on the porch, watching the secondary sun set. Len smiled at the sight of Jim's golden hair glinting in the orangey glow. He resisted the urge to interrupt them, to kiss that sensitive spot under Jim's left ear, to remind them that it was dark and late and they only had rations and two blankets, and were they really planning to sleep here?

But instead of that, he turned to the last door, the one to the left of the door. Neither Jim nor Nate had approached it; in fact, both seemed to be giving it a wide berth. Leonard knew they didn't have the happiest memories of this house, and figured at worst he'd find some kind of evidence of the things Jim had already told him.

He tried to door, an old fashioned thing like all the doors in the house, with hinges and knobs. It reminded Leonard a little of home, of the house and Jocelyn had chosen after they were married, where she and Joanna and Treadway still lived. He'd spent hours shining the fancy brass knob on their front door, taking pride in how it stood out against the red paint on that first weekend after the honeymoon, his first weekend being a _husband_.

He hoped it tarnished.

In the meantime, back in New Riverside, in the house Jim had been tortured in, the door on the ground floor was stuck or locked or something. Len stood for a moment, jiggling the handle before a voice behind him solemnly intoned, "It's locked. It's always been locked."

Leonard turned to face Nate, who was leaning against the doorframe, grinning like the cat that ate the canary. "Why's that?"

Nate shrugged. "Frank's room."

Leonard just nodded, and the two stood awkwardly in the entryway, neither making any sudden movements, though it didn't go completely unnoticed that Nate's hand was hovering close to his phaser.

"Jim?" Leonard asked, because goddamn it, someone had to say something.

"Walking down to his shuttle, bringing it here. How do you feel about staying the night?"

Leonard raised an eyebrow, and Nate bit back a laugh. "Okay," he smiled. "You trust me about as far as you can spit? Fair. I'd say you could go but--"

"But I'd never leave Jim."

Now it was Nate's eyebrow skimming his hairline. "Like I did?"

Leonard shrugged. "You were 14."

"Just making sure we both know that."

Leonard sighed. "What do you want me to say, Sa-- Nate? You want me to say that it's okay that you left, that it was okay to abandon Jim- and you did abandon him -to be beaten by Frank when he had the same laundry list of male disappointments that you have? You want me to tell you how glad I am that you found asylum in the home of some murdering scumbags, who, by the by, tortured your brother for three days before he killed them rather humanely? I'm not gonna say any of that. I'm gonna tolerate you quietly because no matter what you did, Jim wants you in his life because he has a good heart - a better one than me. But if you think for one second I am gonna turn my back on you and let you pull him apart again, you got another think coming. You get me?"

Nate's eyes narrowed, and Leonard found it easier to think of him as _Nate_ when he looked like a murderous fucking scumbag, but that was something to analyze another time. He took a step in, his lip curling up. Nate was as broad as Leonard, and a few inches taller, but the doctor had no intention of backing down from this - Leonard didn't back down, not when it came to things that actually fucking mattered.

"You really wanna test me, McCoy?"

"What are you going to do, decompress me again?"

Leonard wasn't sure what he expected Nate to do at that - punch him or scream at him or, fuck, actually drag him back to the shuttle for another fun session with oxygen deprivation. What he wasn't expecting was for the soldier's face to break a little, to smile gently,

"I'm not a bad guy, Leonard."

"Could have fooled me."

"I do what I have to do."

"And what you have to do is apprehend the number four pirate on the Fleet's Most Wanted List, right? Your fucking brother?"

Nate stared at his boots, scuffing them against the ancient carpet. "No. I don't- I honestly don't know what I'm going to do about that."

"Yeah," McCoy growled. "You'd better figure that out, buddy. Because I promise you, the only way the Fleet is taking Jim again is over my dead body."

Nate nodded, turned on his heel and went back out to the porch to finish watching the sunset.

After a minute spent regaining a regular heart-rate, McCoy followed.

\---

Nate was leaning on the rickety railing of the porch silently, remembering and trying to forget at the same time.

 _He is ten. Jimmy is seven and still wets the bed. They're being left with Uncle Frank and Sam doesn't like the house, doesn't like the way the dirt shifts under his feet or the way the suns beat down or the way the air smells like dying things._

 _He misses_ Kelvin _and he misses Chris and he misses his daddy._

 _Winona is leaving and Sam doesn't know what to do. He trots down the stairs at her heels, tugging on her shirts and trying to get her attention._

 _She stops at the door and turns to wrap him in a hug._

 _"Mommy, don't go--"_

 _"I'll be back in a month, Sammy, I just have to-- I have to do a job."_

 _She has to sell their ship, she heard him tell Uncle Frank._

 _"Uncle Frank is mean."_

 _"It's okay to be scared, sweetie. Be good, okay?"_

 _"Mommy--"_

 _"Take care of your brother, okay?_

He noticed in an odd, detached way that McCoy had come out to sit on the steps. The other man felt more like a dream than a being, and Nate wasn't totally sure what that said about his psyche. But McCoy was right: Jim was a wanted criminal and Nate had been dispatched to bring him in. He could lose his commission for failure. Or worse.

Even though it was a guarded secret, there were still those in the Fleet who knew who Nate had been, who knew the truth about his family of origin. Failure to bring in Jim would have the potential of exposing Nate. There were still people who would scream for his blood, who wanted to see anyone who had ever breathed the same air as George Kirk, Sr. punished.

Nate loved his life. He loved Aurelan, he loved his job, he loved Earth. And he barely knew Jim.

He and McCoy sat in silence for what felt like hours, but the sun was still setting when Nate finally broke the silence. "Does it ever get easier to live like this?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Living on the run, being a fugitive. Fuck, your daughter can't even know where her dad is. Don't you miss her?"

Leonard looked up at the sky, maybe searching for answers. Maybe just looking at stars. Finally, he turned to Nate and held out his right hand. It was hard to see in the fading evening light, but there was a word tattooed along McCoy's index finger.

"It says Joanna," McCoy mumbled, running his thumb across the ink. "My baby girl. I figured - about two years ago, after Jim came back from his Fleet ordeal - I figured I was probably going to die on _Enterprise_. I mean, fuck. I love Jim and I love Christine. Maybe I don't say it to them enough, but I do. And as much as I miss Joanna, and I miss her every waking hour of my life, I've made this choice, this choice to be a pirate. This choice to be the partner of a man on the Most Wanted list, the choice to come out here. And she has a good family, with Jocelyn and Clay. And I support her however I can but-- well, sometimes doing what's best for a person means that I can't ever see my baby again. And I hate that. But I accept that it's the choice I made, for better or for worse."

Nate stared into the middle distance, for a moment. "I have two stars," he muttered. "On my left shoulder."

McCoy raised an eyebrow, a gesture so exaggerated by his elastic face that Nate could see it, even in the dark. "I used to think, when we were kids, that Jim and I were lost boys. So. Second star to the right, all that. A way to get home."

McCoy nodded. "We all wear our regrets. Except Jim, because he's fucking allergic to too many dyes to even want a tattoo."

Nate nodded. He remembered Jim as a kid, sneaking cookies even though chocolate made him sick, crying because he wanted an apple. Sickly Jim, Winona had to take care of him and Sam had to play quietly in the hospital waiting room.

"He's my brother," Nate muttered, almost to no one. "I can't turn him in."

"I know." McCoy turned back to watch the last of the sunset and smiled as the primary sun began to rise before the sky had totally darkened. "He's impossible not to love."

Nate wanted to laugh. He had come here to force Jim to justify the murders he had committed, to explain to Nate why his loved ones were more important. But he still hadn't asked those things, and found himself not caring because Jim was Jim, and he would always be Nate's little brother.

Neither of them was perfect. It seemed like such a dumb thing to think in retrospect, but Jim had _seemed_ perfect, a little clone of their father, when they were kids. He was a good kid then, and the years had erased the annoying things he did, the thefts of books and PADDs, the constant jabbering, the ruined Christmas when Winona didn't come home and Jim knocked over the tree and Sam had gotten his ass beaten for not watching the kid. All that seemed to blend into background noise, and all that mattered were the days spent in the fields, wishing there were other kids, the nights on the roof watching the stars, the stupid animated shit Jim watched because it was age appropriate and so Sam could watch too, even if he had to pretend he hated it.

The good times took over in retrospect.

And if he hadn't lived the life Jimmy had, the life Winona wanted, the life Chris _Fucking_ Pike thought he should, well, he was still happy. And he had done his best, just like them.

They had all been dealt a shitty hand, just being born in this universe. He and Jim and McCoy, Winona and Pike and all the rest. And when Nate really thought about it, basking in the glow between suns on the front porch in New Riverside, it seemed that they had all done what they could.

\---

Leonard and Nate were still sitting on the porch, the silence heavy on their ears, when Jim landed the shuttle in the front year.

"You two playing nice?" He grinned, practically bounding off the shuttle. Leonard thought, not for the first time, that Jim had truly missed his calling as a golden retriever.

"We're playing civil," Nate offered. "Which is pretty good, seeing as I think he broke my cheekbone and I decompressed him."

Leonard nodded and stood, stretching. Jim laughed almost giddily, leaning in to steal a kiss from McCoy's lips.

"I'm glad. Well. Not about the hurting each other bit. But the rest."

Nate stood too, and smiled sadly at his little brother. Part of him really wished he had kidnapped the nurse as well, so he could see Jim really shine. But the rest of him was still trying to figure out what they were going to do in the morning.

"There's a box you should see," McCoy was saying, making his way towards the front door. "Full of stuff from your-- from George."

Jim nodded and followed him in, Nate bringing up the rear.

\---

It turned out that neither of the boys was particularly interested in Winona's notes or the random shirts. They divvied up the holos without much fuss- Nate took the ones from before Winona was noticeably pregnant, Jim took the ones from after. The pictures he was in.

That took all of five minutes, which is how Leonard found himself facing the Locked Door flanked by Jim and Nate.

He felt it deserved capital letters, if only because both Kirk boys refused to look at it for more than a few seconds.

"We need to go in there," he said, setting his jaw. Jim fidgeted. Nate looked at a spot on the wall. "Do either of you have a key, a code? Something?"

Still no response. Well, this fucking memory pit was rotting at the seams anyway, what the hell. He shifted his weight and kicked at the wood below the doorknob.

The explosion of pseudowood and noise was impressive. The door swung inward, slamming against to opposite wall with an ear shattering bang. All three men coughed at the influx of dust from the musty room, and McCoy took a moment to think that, in any other situation, the swirling eddies of dirt in the new sunlight might be pretty. Bacteria-infested, disease-prone beauties, but beauties all the same.

When he asked later, neither Nate nor Jim knew what they were expecting to find in their Uncle's former room. Chains and whips and a skeleton. Maybe even the carefully preserved memories of a man who regretted the way he treated his nephews.

They didn't find any of that. They barely found anything at all.

The room was dim with heavy curtains pulled over the windows. Jim ventured in first, his shoulders hunched as though he was sure there was a coiled snake in the room, waiting to strike. Leonard followed behind him, wishing for all the world that he knew what kind of comfort to offer, and that Jim would accept it if he did.

Instead, he opened the curtains.

The room was stark, but not bare. The walls had once been blue, but time and humidity had stained them yellow and brown at the seams, radiating outward like a gradient. A king-size mattress sat on the stained carpet, a vivid yellow stain firmly in the middle. The source of the stain - and first McCoy thought it must be urine - was a bottle of Southern Comfort left on its side for God knows how long, the fluid inside long past congealed and well on its way to growing a colony of something green and red and black that had taken over the inside of the bottle.

There was also a dresser, the drawers thrown haphazardly open, peeks of white and blue flowing out, and a chair on its side, cushion strewn halfway across the room. Frank had left in a hurry, left things behind like he was being chased.

Knowing what Pike did to him, he probably was.

Behind him, Jim retched. Before he really knew what he was doing, Leonard had gathered his captain in his arms, soothing hands running down his back as the blond shook against his chest. "It's okay, darlin', just a room. Just an empty room," he murmured against the fuzz of Jim's hair, and if it was ticklish under McCoy's nose, he didn't care. "He ain't here, he's never gonna be here, you're all right. I got you."

He held Jim for a minute, just trying to be strong, but feeling his own weariness, the exertion of the past few days, begin to seep into his consciousness. He'd been going and going, and the fatigue was hitting him at warp speed.

McCoy sank to his knees, and Jim went with him, his face still pressed against the doctor's broad chest, hands balling in the fabric of his shirt. Leonard didn't know if Jim was crying, but they were both shaking as the world outside the house edged into a harsh brightness.

The footsteps behind him were honestly surprising, and the slim hand on his shoulder made Leonard jump, though he knew who it was.

"You two need to sleep," Nate breathed, his voice high and a little shaky. "We all do."

Leonard nodded and pulled Jim back to his feet. "Shuttle," he croaked out, surprised at the harshness in his voice, and together he and Jim made their way out of the room, Nate pulling the cracked door snugly closed behind them.

\---

The day on Coltar IV was technically 43 hours, but Federation standard time had managed to take hold before the Fleet-Guild schism, and most people still managed a close approximation of the 24-hour cycle.

Jim slept for twelve hours, dreaming that the water in the quarry came welling up and crashing down the road, bearing the mangled Corvette inside of it. He dreamed of rushing out of the shuttle, sealing Sam and Winona and Pike inside and telling them to go, running to find things, to fix things, to stop the flood.

He woke in a sweat, blankets tangled tightly around his legs and chill evening air nipping at his cheeks. The back hatch of the shuttle was open, and there were voices outside; Bones' low baritone and Sam - no, _Nate_ , get it right, Jimmy - Nate's rumbling bass.

He missed Christine, then, achingly. He missed her sweet scent, missed her eyes, missed the way he could say things like "My chest hurts" and she could come back with "Well, what are you sad about?" Jim needed to be _known_ in that moment, but the blank walls of the shuttle and the empty bed weren't doing him any favors.

He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and sat up, noting dimly that he was still in his clothes and his mouth tasted like something had died in it about a week ago.

"Hey, darlin'." Bones ducked into the shuttle, one of his rare smiles causing a thrill in the pit of Jim's stomach. "You awake now?"

"Yeah," Jim yawned and reached out for Bones, who perched lightly at the edge of the cot.

"You- look, Jim. You don't ever have to tell me anything you don't want, okay?"

Jim just stared ahead. He knew where this was going. He'd been there with Pike and with Winona before.

"But your reaction- the way you- Jim, he did more than hit you, didn't he?"

Jim sunk back against the pillow, running his hand up his face to fist in his hair. "No, Bones. He never did more than hit me," he replied, but his voice sounded hollow and flat, even to his own ears.

Bones opened his mouth to reply, but Jim cut across him.

"You want me to say he touched me, or something right? He didn't. He hated me. Could barely look at me. He told me I didn't matter, told me I was no one. Every fucking day after Sam left. Before, too, I guess.'Doesn't matter what you do, Jimmy, you'll end up a smear on the galaxy like your father. He should have let them take you.' I--" he felt the tears rising, but swallowed hard to shove them down. No point. No fucking point in bawling over how hard his life had been. "I don't know why he hated me. I just- I'm glad he's dead. More glad than I am about Archer and Komack, more glad than I am about almost anything else. Cause now I'm on the most wanted list, Bones. Now I'm someone, and he's decomposing."

Nate's voice piped up from the entrance hatch, thick with emotion. "I'm sorry I left you, Jimmy."

Jim shook his head. "You _knew_ , Sammy. You knew what he was like. You were the only thing stopping him from hurting me, and you _left_." He heard his voice growing higher with panic, with emotion, with something that Christine would have a word for but he just didn't. "At least you remembered Dad, at least Mom could look at you without crying. You were-- Sammy, you were the only person besides Pike who loved me and you both _left_ me."

Bones was holding Jim's hand, and neither of them was sure when that had happened. In the hatch, backlit by the few stars and luminous moon, Nate stared at his shoes.

"I'm sorry," he said again, toeing the deck. "I-- I thought you'd be okay. I was scared. I was hurting, as much as you were. Differently. I always planned to come back for you."

Jim stared blankly ahead, his eyes unfocused. "Took your time."

"You're hard to find."

The silence stretched out into infinity, and Jim imagined the tension filling the shuttle until it popped its welds, until the emotions overtook the air system and they all suffocated in his anger and Nate's regret. Finally, he felt like he was breathing again. He stared at his brother.

"Are you going to take me to the Fleet?"

Nate shook his head. "No. I- I can't. They'd kill you."

Jim nodded. "If you don't--"

Nate shrugged. "Then I don't. I make up a story about you ambushing me, stealing McCoy and being a pirate."

"And then what? We never see each other again?"

Jim thought he sounded like a very small child, asking the question. But goddamn it, he had just gotten his brother back and he didn't want to lose him again, not yet.

"And then we go back to our lives."

"No."

The word was a surprise to Jim, and for a moment he wondered how he had said it without noticing. But Nate was staring at Bones, who opened his mouth again. "No, you two... you're both idiots."

Jim nodded. He'd heard that before.

"You, Jim, can be anywhere any time. You can meet with Nate. And you, Nate, you're number two on the Taskforce? You can change policy."

Jim smiled. His brilliant Bones. His fucking brilliant Bones.

"I have a better idea."

Jim laid it out quickly; the Guild had been after him for the past year to serve on a council, to use the Kirk name as a rallying point to get some of the more extreme members to fall into line. Jim had resisted, he had told them exactly where they could stick this idea.

But, he was seeing it now. Join the Guildies, play nice, rise to power. Let Nate to the same in the Fleet.

And then, and then. And then they would change the fucking universe.

\---

They sat in the shuttle, Jim and Leonard and Nate, talking through the rest of the night and into the two-sun morning. There were details to plot, times to bring together, people to consider. Jim would have to start small, lay low, and begin effecting the change slowly. Nate was in a better position, but he needed to be bulletproof, needed it not to matter that he was really George Kirk's son, because by the time they were done, by the time people caught on to the plan, there would be trouble.

Jim was already a hero, he was already a leader. Nate had the training, if not the charisma. And, listening to them talk, Leonard began to believe that they would be successful.

They'd been talking for hours, Jim's voice starting to sound scratchy as he and Nate hammered out the edges of the plan and laid it flat, when the third shuttle arrived. All three of them reached for sidearms, but the people who came off the craft weren't bearing malice.

"Mom?"

The tone of Nate's voice was high, childish. Leonard found himself reminded of Jim's whining and wheedling when he wanted something, when he would demand chocolate or peanut butter or something else and expect to be patched up after.

Winona lost all pretense and ran at her older son, crashing hard into him, arms clutching him close and face crumpling to tears.

"Sam, Sammy, Sammy. Sam." She said his name like a prayer and it occurred to Leonard that he was witnessing something private, something intimate. He turned away.

Jim had crossed to the other figure, who was releasing him from a hug to swat him across the back of the head. "You don't comm?" Chris Pike's voice floated the short distance between them. "You send a vid of Sam being fucking tortured to me and your mother and then don't answer hails and don't comm. I swear to fucking God On High, James Kirk--"

Jim laughed and pulled Pike into another hug. "Sorry, dad. Got kinda busy here. Wanna meet Nate?"

"Who in the great fucking hell is Nate, Jim? We don't have time for games."

But Jim just led Pike to where Winona and Nate were still clutching each other, a grin on his face that could light up a black hole.

"Winona, Dad, this is Nathaniel Ranger Komack-Archer. My brother."

Leonard shook his head. Jim, for all his charm, could never resist the theatrical, and an introduction like that just raised questions, didn't answer a damn thing.

But Pike nodded and offered his hand when Winona finally disengaged from her eldest to give Jim a smack that mirrored Pike's.

"I've been wanting to meet you for a long time, son," he said, and Nate smiled.

 _Fucking hell,_ Leonard thought, _they're all insane_.

And then he laughed, because why the fuck not?

\---

The talk went on for another few hours, Nate and Jim explaining what they were up to, what had happened, what they'd done in the last day and the eighteen years that preceded it. Winona cried and Pike pretended not to be emotional, but there were tears in his eyes, too.

By the time they were done, all four were on board - Winona and Pike had helped develop the ideas the boys had into a fucking five-year plan, like they were modernizing the Soviet Union and not changing the fundamental trajectories of two major forces in the galaxy. But fuck, they were Kirks (or close enough) and what was the difference, really?

No one wanted to leave when the talk was done, Winona and Jim and Pike drawing answers out of Nate until he finally looked at Leonard with eyes that begged for release, that screamed of overwhelming panic, of being faced with your family again for the first time in eighteen years and not being able to _take it_ because no matter how long you've been gone, they're still family and goddamn, everyone needs a break.

So Leonard stood and he stretched and he said something like, "Nate, are they expecting you back at headquarters?"

Nate nodded and Jim scowled and Leonard thought that he might not get any for a few days, but he was pretty sure the Fleet owed him a favor, and there was a certain little girl who would be getting presents on her birthday with her daddy's name on the tag for sure.

The three shuttles staggered their departures, just in case anyone in the atmosphere felt like watching for whatever stupid reason. Pike and Winona first, Nate second, and, after a few well placed fire starters in an old house full of Jim's worst memories, he and Leonard were on their way back to _Enterprise_.

On their way back home, on their way to make this life what it should have been.

\---

Jim flew the shuttle in silence. He knew he and Bones had things to talk about, things they had to work out, but they were the things he had to go over with Christine, too, and Jim didn't want to have the conversation more than once.

The plan was risky, and not just for him. Pirates had been strung up before for conspiring with the Fleet, and not even the Kirk name would protect him if he pissed enough people off. But he had Pike and Spock's connections, his mother's help, the support that came with the love of his partners.

His crew would follow him; they'd stayed on when he had revealed who he was, they'd worked as hard as he had to get Bones back. This was going to work, he knew it was. He was going to change the universe.

Jim tried to put the last 96 hours in perspective, but they were still kaleidoscopic, shifting colors and patterns slipping between his fingers. But he felt the smile play along his lips, anyway. He felt safe, he thought. He had love and he had family and he had safety and freedom.

And, for the first time he could remember, he was happy.

\---

epilogue

Christine grinned over her shoulder at the man under the umbrella, scowling and squinting into the bright, mid-afternoon sun. "I say we tackle him," she laughed, grinning over at Jim. "I say we tackle him and kiss the face right off him."

Jim smiled lazily from where he lay on his blanket, soaking up the sun. "But comfortable."

He was looking positively cheerful, and it had been a long time since Christine had seen her Golden Boy so relaxed. It was a year since he'd found his brother again and, between raids and back-alley deals to keep up appearances, Jim had started taking an active role in the governance of the Guild, using his name and connections to move up the ladder.

She knew why he was doing it, what was at stake. But the fact remained that the activities all but drained the spark from him.

The news of Decker's lateral promotion to training and Nate's assuming control of the Taskforce had come two days prior, and had been the impetus for this trip to Omecron Theta.

Things were ahead of schedule and, though there was still a long road to walk, the ground was beginning to firm up under their feet, the path was looking clearer, and they knew they weren't alone on it.

The blue bikini was small on Christine, and showed more skin than she might have under normal circumstances, but this was a freaking celebration, and Jim loved her in blue.

The cooler by Leonard was stocked with beer and sandwiches and peaches to be grilled, marshmallows for s'mores, and an Epinephrine hypospray, just in case Jim's body found something new it didn't like on the list.

But for now the water rasped patiently against the sand, the sun moved across its expanse, and, 300 kilometers in the atmosphere, _Enterprise_ kept her silent vigil. For just a moment, before Leonard coughed and a bird cried and thoughts of changing the galaxy settled back into the wrinkles on Jim's brow, in the silence and the peace, everything was okay.

[part 3](http://community.livejournal.com/velocicopter/2529.html)|[Author's Note](http://community.livejournal.com/velocicopter/1861.html)


	6. FIC: If We Lived And Were Good (Author's Note)

_**FIC: If We Lived And Were Good (Author's Note)**_  
Author's Note:

This story, in so many ways, could not exist without [](http://theoreticalpixy.livejournal.com/profile)[**theoreticalpixy**](http://theoreticalpixy.livejournal.com/) and [](http://emmypenny.livejournal.com/profile)[**emmypenny**](http://emmypenny.livejournal.com/). They literally were there from the beginning, the game at [](http://startrek-diary.livejournal.com/profile)[**startrek_diary**](http://startrek-diary.livejournal.com/) that inspired this mess. And they were reading as it developed in a locked LJ post, and then it got too big they both would come hang out and watch me vomit words into google docs. Thank you, both, for the hand holding, the ass kicking, and the talking. And when the day came that the ending didn't work and I lost 7700 words, thank you for not letting me curl into a ball and weep. Thank you for making me giggle, listening to me talk about cats, and sharing videos and pictures and other things to get it going. You are, quite literally, my Pike and my Christine. I love you both. This is for you.

(Also worth mentioning that the story Pike tells in the prison is cribbed almost completely from Pixy, and the interaction Bones remembers with Christine when he's flashing back is Emmy's.)

Thanks as well to the members of [](http://startrek-diary.livejournal.com/profile)[**startrek_diary**](http://startrek-diary.livejournal.com/) who played the original game; Bubbles and Sav and Emmy and Pixy, all of whom gave me character bits- One and Komack and Archer and Bones and Pike and Christine - and whose brilliant storytelling was inspiring enough to get me to write this.

Thanks to [](http://hsavinien.livejournal.com/profile)[**hsavinien**](http://hsavinien.livejournal.com/) who is better at commas than I am.

Also thanks to [](http://echoinautumn.livejournal.com/profile)[**echoinautumn**](http://echoinautumn.livejournal.com/) , who listened to me freak out about this from time to time, who got excited at the premise, and who helped me suss out the ending when I needed it. For lending me a kitten to get me through the hard times, and giggling about hot sauce when the times were okay.

Mostly, this is for my own brother, the boy who took me on our roof to watch the stars when things got bad in our house, even if our parents wasn't up there.  
And for my father, who taught me all about "loser's games" and served as the template for Pike, and for my mom who isn't in this but I love her anyway.

This is my first epic-length fic, and it stated out as half nano project, half experiment. The story was the same until Pike left the ship, and then four years later Sam was going to kidnap _him_ and Jim and One were going to go on an adventure to bring him back. I got all the way to the final stand-off between Jim and Sam before realizing that Jim could NEVER kill Sam, not the Jim I had let him grow into, and there was no alternative in this 'verse that would be a real ending. Plus One was there, and Sam couldn't deal with that. So I had to scrap the last 7000 words and reformat the whole ending. I lost a lot of good stuff. I lost an awesome scene between Bones and One, I lost great scenes where Sam tortured Pike, and a fantastic scene between Jim and Winona. Plus the Jim/One relationship that I have promised I will revisit in some kind of sequel where they go shopping or something. But I hope that what I ended up with is okay in its own way.

I learned a lot when writing this. I learned how tempting "rocks fall, everyone dies" really is sometimes. I learned why Bond villains are so idiotic. I learned about effective villaining and why I would suck at it. I learned about locked rooms and closed boxes and the things we hide in them.

Finally, I want to share some of the things that inspired me as I went about writing, things I collected to get me going:

First of all, there really was a pirate named [George Lowther](http://blindkat.hegewisch.net/pirates/whoslowther.html) in the 18th century, and I owe him for his likeness, though I doubt he'd thank me.

Four songs became the crux of my "pirates" playlist. They are;  
 _Blacking Out The Friction_ by Death Cab for Cutie  
 _If I Fail_ by Cartel  
 _Modern Swinger_ by The Pink Spiders  
 _The Permanent Rain_ by The Dangerous Summer.  
I would listen to these songs (and others) on repeat in the car, at home, at work. They got me to some of this delicious angst.

In terms of pictures, I have some. Not a ton.  
-[This entire shoot](http://www.designscene.net/2010/02/v64-carolyn-murphy-by-sebastian-faena.html) for Kirk/McCoy/Chapel.  
-[This](http://weheartit.com/entry/3744570) scene here for Jim and Sam as kids.  
-[This](http://www.demotix.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/large_610x456_scaled/photos/399903.jpg) is Frank's bedroom at the house in New Riverside.  
-And this is [Sam as an adult](http://l.yimg.com/img.tv.yahoo.com/tv/us/img/site/45/27/0000034527_20061021003015.jpg), as played by Jacob Young.  
And that's it.

I also have to acknowledge a few fics, as well, ones that inspired me or just left my jaw on the floor.  
-[Left Alone To Wander](http://thistlerose.livejournal.com/1214439.html) by [](http://thistlerose.livejournal.com/profile)[**thistlerose**](http://thistlerose.livejournal.com/) , who made me want to write a Sam story.  
-[Knives in the Water](http://green-postit.livejournal.com/105834.html) by [](http://green-postit.livejournal.com/profile)[**green_postit**](http://green-postit.livejournal.com/) , whose raw torture scenes made me want to make ine as good as hers.  
-[Light, Inaccessible](http://rubynye.livejournal.com/467969.html) by [](http://rubynye.livejournal.com/profile)[**rubynye**](http://rubynye.livejournal.com/) , who writes Pike and Winona and George the way I can only hope to.  
-[b song](http://ladybugkay.livejournal.com/80116.html) by [](http://ladybugkay.livejournal.com/profile)[**ladybugkay**](http://ladybugkay.livejournal.com/) , who created such a stunning picture of Jim I can't even give it words.

Thank you for reading. -_sam

[part 4](http://community.livejournal.com/velocicopter/2236.html)|[Masterpost](http://community.livejournal.com/velocicopter/3262.html)


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